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THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE 



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THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

NEW YORK • BOSTON • CHICAGO • DALLAS 
ATLANTA • SAN FRANCISCO 

MACMILLAN & CO., Limited 

LONDON • BOMBAY • CALCUTTA 
MELBOURNE 

THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, Ltd. 

TORONTO 



THE 

PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE 



BY 



DOUGLAS CLYDE MACINTOSH, Ph.D. 

ASSISTANT PROFESSOR OF SYSTEMATIC THEOLOGY 
IN YALE UNIVERSITY 



THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
1915 

All rights reserved^ 






Copyright, 1915, 
By the MACMILLAN COMPANY. 



Set up and clectrotypcd. Published October, 1915. 



J. 8. Cashing Co. — Berwick & Smith Co. 
Norwood, Mass., U.S.A. 

NOV I 1915 

©CI.A41435e4 
"VvD ( « 



MY FIRST COMPANION 

JOHN EVERETT MACINTOSH 

WITH 

THE GRATITUDE AND AFFECTION 

OF 

A YOUNGER BROTHER 



>^' 



ACKNOWLEDGMENT 

i 

If I were to undertake to make complete acknowledgment of 
my indebtedness to others for stimulus and direction in connec- 
tion with the study of the problems discussed in this volume, I 
should want to begin by referring to my first teacher of philoso- 
phy, Professor James Ten Broeke, of McMaster University, 
Toronto. But where to end I should scarcely know. I shall 
therefore mention only those whom I have to thank for one direct 
service or another in connection with the actual production of the 
present volume. 

Through the kindness of my former teachers, Professors J. E. 
Angell and A. W. Moore, of the University of Chicago ; of my 
colleagues, Professors E. W. Hopkins, A. K. Eogers, and C. A. 
Bennett, of Yale University; of my former colleagues in Yale 
University, Professor W. E. Hocking (now of Harvard Univer- 
sity) and Dr. H. T. Costello (now of Columbia University) ; and, 
finally, of Professor E. B. Perry, of Harvard University, and 
Professor D. S. Miller, of the G-eneral Theological Seminary, 
New York, various portions of the volume have been read in the 
manuscript, and as a result not a few helpful criticisms and 
suggestions have been received. I am particularly indebted to 
Dr. Costello in connection with the references to the logisticians 
in the last chapter. It should not be concluded, however, that 
here, or elsewhere in the book, any one except the author is to be 
held responsible for any of the opinions expressed. 

For friendly counsel and other manifestations of kindly inter- 
est in connection with the publishing of the work I am grateful 
to Dean Shailer Mathews, of the University of Chicago, and 
Professor E. Hershey Sneath, of Yale University. 

Grateful acknowledgment is also made of assistance received 
from my friend and former pupil, Mr, E. W. K. Mould, in the 
preparation of the manuscript for the publishers ; from my friend 



Vlil ACKNOWLEDGMENT 

and pupil, Mr. F. W. Shorter, in the reading of the proof ; and 
from my sister, Miss Anna B. Macintosh, in the preparation of 
the index of authors. 

D. C. MACmTOSH. 

Breadalbane, Ontario, 
August 31st, 1916. 



TABLE OF CHAPTEKS 



Chapter I. Introductory : Philosophy and Its Principal 
Problems 



Gon- 



PART I: THE PBOBLEM OF IMMEDIATE KNOWLEDGE 

A. THE PROBLEM OF ACQUAINTANCE (EPISTEMOLOGY 

PROPER) 

1. A Critique of Dualism 

Chapter II. Dualism and Avowed Agnosticism 
Chapter III. Dualism and Attempted Metaphysics 
Chapter IV. Dualism and Attempted Metaphysics 

eluded) .... 

2. A Critique of Idealism 

Chapter V. Mystical and Logical Idealism 
Chapter VI. Psychological Idealism . 
Chapter VII. The Older Absolute Idealism 
Chapter VIII. The Newer Absolute Idealism 

r Chapter IX. The Disintegration of Idealism 
A Critique of the New Bealism .... 
Chapter X. Antecedents of the New Realism 
Chapter XI. The Neo-Realistic Doctrine of Secondary 
Qualities ' . 
Chapter XII. The Neo-Realistic Doctrine of Consciousness 
Chapter XIII. The Neo-Realistic Doctrine of Relations, 
Universals, and Values 



11 

11 
11 
13 
36 

67 

72 

72 

92 

126 

154 

181 

211 

211 

232 
259 



4. Constructive Statement 310 

Chapter XIV. Critical Monism in Epistemology . . 310 
B. PROBLEMS OF THE WAYS AND MEANS OF KNOWING 
(MORPHOLOGY OF KNOWLEDGE, AND GENETIC 

LOGIC) 336 

Chapter XV. The Morphology of Knowledge . . .336 
Chapter XVI. The Genesis of the Apriori . . . .351 

PART II: THE PBOBLEM OF MEDIATE KNOWLEDGE . 367 

A. THE PROBLEM OF TRUTH (LOGICAL THEORY) . 367 

Chapter XVIL A Critique of Intellectualism . . .369 

Chapter XVIII. A Critique of Anti-Intellectualism . .401 

Chapter XIX. Critical Monism in Logical Theory . . 438 

B. THE PROBLEM OF PROOF (METHODOLOGY) . . 459 

Chapter XX. The Problem of Scientific Method . , 459 



ANALYTICAL TABLE OF CONTENTS 

Introduction (1) : 

a. Philosophy in general (1). 
Its definition (1). 

Its relation to the special sciences (1). 
Problems of values and of reality (3). 
6. The Problem of Knowledge (6). 

Typical attitudes toward the problem (7) : 

Woodbridge (7), J. Watson (8), Ladd (8). 
Subdivisions of the problem (10). 

PART I: THE PBOBLEM OF IMMEDIATE KNOWLEDGE (11). 
Division A. THE PROBLEM OF ACQUAINTANCE (EPISTE- 
MOLOGY PROPER (11). 
Introductory definitions (13). 

Subdivision I. A Critique of Absolute Epistemological Dualism 
(Epistemological Dualism and Critical Realism). An absolute 
duality of the experienced and the independently real (14). 
Agnosticism logically involved (14). 
a. The agnosticism avowed (14). 

Locke (a forerunner) (14), Kant (17), Schulze (24), 
Hamilton (25), Spencer (27), cf. Bradley and Hodg- 
son (30), Riehl (31), Dilthey (33). 
h. Attempted metaphysics ; agnosticism not fully acknowl- 
edged (36). 

(1) Jacobi (37), Reinhold (37), Fries (38), Neo- 

Friesianism (41), Herbart (42), Lotze (44), 
Ladd (50), Pringle-Pattison (51), Strong (52), 
Love joy (56). 

(2) Schelling (57), Schopenhauer (58), Hartmann 

(60), Volkelt (63), Cornelius {m), Kuelpe (68), 
B. Russell's earlier view (70) . 
Subdivision II. A Critique of Idealistic Absolute Epistemological 
Monism (Epistemological Monism and Dogmatic Idealism). The 
view that (physical) reality is nothing beyond idea, offered as a 
solution of the problem of knowledge (72) . 
Preliminary distinctions (73). 

1. The Integration of Idealism. Development of idealistic 
thought from simpler to more composite forms (74) . 



xil ANALYTICAL TABLE OF CONTENTS 

A. Mystical Idealism. The interpretation of physical reality 

as mere idea, suggested by the mystical experience (75). 
The Upanishad philosophers (75), Albertus Magnus 
(79), Eckhart et al. (79), Mrs. Eddy (79). 

B. Logical Idealism. The interpretation of reality as the 

logical idea (the abstract absolute idea, the absolutely 
satisfactory predicate, or definition), suggested by the 
dialectic (81). 
Plato (81). 

C. Mystical-Logical Idealism. A dyadic compound of ele- 

mental forms of idealism, the mystical and the logical 
(89). 
Plotinus (89). 

D. Psychological Idealism. The interpretation of the phys- 

ical object as mere content of consciousness, under the 
influence of the psychological point of view (92). 

The logical fallacies involved (93). 

a. Undisguised psychological idealism : 

(1) Berkeley (97), Hume (98), J. S. Mill (100), 

Clifford (100), Pearson (102), Marshall 
(103). 

(2) Fichte (104), Fouill^e (105). 

(3) Lipps (106); Vaihinger (107), Poincar^ 

(108). 
6. Disguised psychological idealism. (Pure empiri- 
cism ; immediate empiricism ; the philosophy 
of pure experience) (109). 
Mach (110), Avenarius (111), Petzoldt (112), 
Wundt (112), Fullerton (114), Hodgson (115), 
James (116), Dewey (117), Mead (118), A. W. 
Moore (119), Bawden (119). 

E. Mystical-Psychological Idealism. A dyadic compound 

of elemental forms of idealism, the mystical and the 
psychological (120). 
Bergson (120). 

F. Logical-Psychological Idealism. A dyadic compound of 

elemental forms of idealism, the logical and the psy- 
chological. Reality as the concrete absolute idea, the 
concrete uaiversal, the logical within the psychological 
(126). 
The monistic (singularistic) form : Absolute Idealism 

(128). 
a. The pre-Bradleian constructive movement; the 
thesis (130). 
(1) Intellectualistic absolute idealism. The ab- 
solute idea determined by rational criti- 
cism (130). 



ANALYTICAL TABLE OF CONTENTS xui 

Hegel (130), Stirling and Wallace (131), 
J. Caird (134), Green et al. (134), 
E. Caird (137), J. Watson (138). 
(2) Voluntaristic absolute idealism. The abso- 
lute idea determined by purpose (141). 
Royce (141). 
/S. The Bradleian criticism ; XhQ antithesis {\^Q). 

Bradley (146). 
7. The post-Bradleian reconstruction ; the synthesis 
(154). 

(1) Intellectualistic absolute idealism (154). 

Bosanquet (154). 

(2) Voluntaristic absolute idealism (159). 

Taylor (159). 

(3) Mystical absolute idealism, or 

G. Mystical-Logical-Psychological Idealism. The triadic 
compound of the elemental forms of idealism (161). 
Hocking (161). 
2. The Disintegration of Idealism. Tendencies from the more 
integrated forms of idealism back to the more elemental 
forms (181). 

A. Toward Personal (Pluralistic) and Psychological Ideal- 

ism (181). 

(1) Monistic Theistic (Psychological) Idealism (182). 

Paulsen (182). 

(2) Semi-Pluralistic Theistic Idealism. Lotzian ideal- 

ism (184). 

(3) Pluralistic Theistic (Psychological) Idealism (184). 
Leibniz (184), Ward (185), Rashdall (187), Schil- 
ler (188), Renouvier (188). 

(4) Pluralistic Semi-Theistic (Logical-Psychological) 

Idealism. Howison (189). 

(5) Pluralistic Atheistic (Logical-Psychological) Ideal- 

ism. McTaggart (190). 

B. Toward Abstract and Logical Idealism (192). 

(1) Psychological-positivistic abstract idealism (192). 
Fullerton's earlier view (192). 

(2) Critical-positivistic (intellectualistic) abstract 

idealism (193). 
Transition to this view. Lange (193), Liebmann 

(195). 
Typical representatives. The Marburg School : 

H. Cohen, Natorp, Cassirer (195). 

(3) Critical-transcendental (voluntaristic) abstract 

idealism (198). 

Windelband (198), Rickert (200), Munsterberg 
(201), Miincb (201). 



XIV ANALYTICAL TABLE OF CONTENTS 

(4) Logical-transcendental abstract idealism (201). 
Husserl (202), Meinong (203). 
A and B. Partial combination of Personal and Abstract 

Idealism. Bakewell (206). 
C. Toward Mystical Idealism (208). 

Spiritual or Keligious Idealism. Theoretical idealism 
retained for its supposed spiritual and especially reli- 
gious value (208) . 
Eucken (208), Boyce Gibson (209). 
Subdivision III. A Critique of Healistic Absolute Epistemological 
Monism (Epistemological Monism and Dogmatic Realism). The 
attempt to maintain the independent reality of the total object of 
experience or thought (211). 

1. Antecedents of the New Realism (211). 

a. Naive realism (212). 

b. The Scottish realism (213). 

Reid (213). 

c. Movements leading to the new realism (217). 

(1) Disguised psychological idealism, as transitional to 

physical realism (219). 
Hodgson (221), James (222), Bush (224), Dewey 
(224), Boodin (227), Fullerton (229). 

(2) Disguised logical idealism, as leading to logical 

realism (230). 

2. The New Realism (232). 

a. The neo-realistic doctrine of secondary qualities (232). 

Woodbridge (233), Alexander (234), G. E. Moore (236), 
McGilvary (238), Nunn (240), B. Russell (242), Hob- 
house (244), Wolf (246) , Fullerton (247), Boodin 
(247), Marvin (248), Spaulding (249), Perry (250), 
Pitkin (251), Holt (251), Montague (254). 

b. The neo-realistic doctrine of consciousness (259). 

(1) The English School (259). 

Influence of Hodgson (259). Hobhouse (260), Mc- 
Dougall (260), Moore (261), Russell (262), Alex- 
ander (262), Stout (264), Wolf (266). 

(2) The American School (266). 

Influence of James (266). Bush (267), Fullerton 

(268). 
Woodbridge's introspective view (269). 
Views of Woodworth (270) and Dunlap (271), 

criticised by Angell (272). 
The behaviorist view (272). Influence of Dewey 

(273). Thorndike (273), J. B. Watson (274), 

Frost (275), Singer and Woodbridge (276). 

Criticism by Miller (277). 



ANALYTICAL TABLE OF CONTENTS XV 

Views of McGilvary (277), Boodin (279), Marvin 
(280), Holt (280), Spaulding (282), Pitkin (282), 
Perry (283), Holt (later statement) (286), Mon- 
tague (287). 
(3) Comparison and general Criticism of views (289). 
C. The neo-realistic doctrine of relations (293). 

Nunn (293), Alexander (294), Stout (294), Russell 
(294), Montague (295), Holt (296), Marvin (296), 
Spaulding (297), Pitkin (298), Perry (300). 

d. The neo-realistic doctrine of universals (302). 

Relation to Platonism (302). Views of several neo- 
realists (302). 

e. The neo-realistic doctrine of values (306). 

Moore (306), Russell (306), McGilvary (307), Alexander 
(307), Montague (307), Perry (308). 

General statement and criticism of the new realism (309). 
Subdivision IV. Constructive Statement : Critical Realistic Episte- 
mological Monism (Epistemological Monism and Critical Realism : 
Critical Monism in Epistemology). Normally, the experienced 
object and the real object numerically identical, the real object 
existing, with some of its qualities and relations, when not experi- 
enced (310). 

Prior immediate knowledge the only explanation of mediate 
knowledge (311). Activistic view of sensation (312). Activistic 
explanation of the nature of consciousness (314). Activistic con- 
ception of causality (316) . Approaches to this point of view (316). 
Argument for activism from freedom (317). The subject-matter 
of psychology (318). Explanation of hallucination, etc. (320). 
Primary and secondary qualities and relations (322). Partial 
knowledge of the thing-in-itself (326). Tertiary qualities and 
relations (327). Values (328). Anticipation of further problems 
(330). Contrast between our doctrine and the Kantian (331). 
Solution of the problem of the externality or internality of rela- 
tions (332). Reflections on the status of epistemology in general 
(333). 

Divisions B and C. SPECIAL PROBLEMS OE THE WAYS AND 
MEANS OF KNOWING (MORPHOLOGY OF KNOWLEDGE, 
AND GENETIC LOGIC) (336). 
Division B. The Fundamental Mode of Cognition (Morphology of 
Knowledge) (336). 
Subdivision I. A Critique of Absolute Morphological Dualism. 
Perception and conception as two irreducibly different modes of 
cognition (336). 
Subdivision II. A Critique of Conceptualistic Absolute Morpho- 
logical Monism. Pure conception the only ultimate mode of cog- 
nition. Platonism (336). 



XVI ANALYTICAL TABLE OF CONTENTS 

Subdivision III. A Critique of Perceptualistic Absolute Morpholog- 
ical Monism. Pure perception the only ultimate mode of cogni- 
tion. Bergson (337). 
Subdivision IV. Constructive Statement. 

Critical Perceptualistic Morphological Monism {Critical Monism 
in the Morphology of Knowledge). Perception the one typ- 
ical and fundamental mode of cognition (337). 
Criticism of approximations to this view (338). Kant (338), 
Royce (339), James (340). Processes not ultimately per- 
ceptual, non-cognitive (341). Cognitive processes ultimately 
perceptual (342). Perception in a complex (343). Introspec- 
tion (344). The new (perceptual) intuitionism (346). 
Division C. The Genesis of the " Apriori " Element in Cognition (Ge- 
netic Logic) (351). 

Subdivision I. A Critique of Absolute Genetic Dualism. Absolute 
rationalism with reference to cognitive forms and absolute empir- 
icism with reference to cognitive contents. Kant (351). 
Subdivision II. A Critique of Rationalistic Absolute Genetic Mo- 
nism. Absolute rationalism in the account of the contents as well 
. as the forms of cognitive experience (352). 

Approximations to this view in Descartes and Leibniz (352). 
Fichte (353), Hegel (353), Green (353), H. Cohen et al. (353). 
Subdivision III. A Critique of Empirical Absolute Genetic Monism. 
Absolute passive empiricism in the account of the forms as well as 
the contents of cognitive experience (353) . 
Hume (353), Jas. and J. S. Mill (354), Spencer (354). 
Subdivision IV. Constructive Statement : Critical Empirical Genetic 
Monism (Critical Monism in Genetic Logic). An activistic em- 
pirical account of the genesis of the forms as well as the contents 
of cognitive experience (355). 
Approximation to this view by James (355). Three defensible 
theories of the apriori which would make possible a critical 
realistic epistemological monism : (a) Inheritance of some 
active psychical characters empirically acquired by ancestors 
(359). (6) Rapid individual acquirement from experience on 
the basis of a special mutation (359). (c) A combination of 
(a) and (6) (359). Criticism of extreme aposteriorism (363). 
Summary (364). 

PART II. THE PBOBLEM OF MEDIATE KNOWLEDGE (367). 

Division A. The Problem of Truth. (Logical Theory, or Philosophical 

Logic) (367). Introductory (369). 

Subdivision I. A Critique of Absolute Logical Dualism. Two irre- 

ducibly different criteria and definitions of truth, the one intel- 

lectualistic, the other anti-intellectualistic, e.g. practical (Kant) 

(370). 



ANALYTICAL TABLE OF CONTENTS XVU 

Subdivision II. A Critique of Intellectualistic Absolute Logical 
Monism. The criterion and definition of truth purely intellectu- 
alistic (identity with reality) (371), 

A. Absolute Intellectualism in combination with Epistemological 

Dualism (371). Locke (371), Leibniz (371), Lotze (372), 
Lovejoy (372), Boyce Gibson (373). 

B. Absolute Intellectualism in combination with Idealistic Episte- 

mological Monism (374), Hegel (374), J. Watson (375), 
Bradley (375), Bosanquet (381), Joachim (383), Koyce 
(384). 

C. Absolute Intellectualism in combination with Realistic Episte- 

mological Monism (391). Aristotle (391), Aquinas (391), 
McGilvary (392), Perry (393), Montague (393), Holt (394), 
Marvin (394), Boodin (395), B. Russell (396). 
" The Law of Significant Assertion " (398). 
Subdivision III. A Critique of Anti-Intellectualistic Logical Monism. 
The criterion of truth not discoverable and truth not definable 
intellectualistically, but only in an anti-intellectualistic way (401). 
a. Anti-conceptualism. Truth to be learned by reverting to pure 
intuition, without concepts (401). 
Bergson (401). Cf. James (406). 
/3. Current Pragmatism (407). 

Essential pragmatism. Practical value of some sort the crite- 
rion of truth (407) . 

1. Approximations to essential pragmatism (409). 

A. Semi-pragmatism. Movements in the direction of 

pragmatism, which yet fall short of the pragmatic 
criterion of truth (410). Peirce (410), Baldwin 
(411), Boodin (412), Royce (413), Hocking (413). 

B. Quasi-pragmatism. Practical values the measure of 

what, for practical purposes, and even in science, 
we are justified in taking as truth ; but this not 
necessarily real truth (414). Mach (414), Poin- 
car^ (414), Vaihinger (415), Bergson (415). 
Appreciation, criticism and explanation (416). 

2. Developments beyond essential pragmatism (417). 

A. Pseudo-pragmatism. All practical value of ideas or 

judgments an indication or proof of their truth (417) . 
James (418), Schiller (419), the Chicago School 
(420). 

B. Hyper-pragmatism. Practical value (usefulness) or 

the process of working (verification) the essential 
nature of the truth (422), James (422), Schiller 
(423), Dewey (423), A. W. Moore (423), Bawden 
(423), Boodin (423), The conversion of J. E. 
Russell (423). 
Criticism and explanation (426). 



xviii ANALYTICAL TABLE OF CONTENTS 

Further problems for the essential pragmatist (431) : 
The avoidance of ultra-utilitarianism (431), and 
ultra-individualism (433). The interpretation of 
consistency and the theoretical interest (435). 
Subdivision IV. Constructive statement : Critical Pragmatic Logical 
Monism {Critical Monism in Logical Theory). The proximate 
genus in the definition of truth derived from intellectualism, and 
the differentia of the species from pragmatism (438). 
The defect of presentation and need of representation (439). The 
criterion of truth found in practical identity ( functional equiva- 
lence) of predicate w^ith subject, of idea with reality, or with fur- 
ther experience of reality (440) . Definition of truth according to 
representational pragmatism (443). The ideal element in truth 
(446) . The essentially human character of truth as defined (446) . 
Further definition of the ideal (448). The permanence of truth 
(449). The need of transcending mere representational prag- 
matism (450). Definition of truth according to revised (intu- 
itional or scientific) representational pragmatism (452). Further 
tests of representational pragmatism (455). 
Division B. The Problem of Proof (Methodology) (459). 
a. The problem of certainty (459). 
6. The problem of proof as the problem of the production of logical 

certainty, the problem of scientific method (461). 
Subdivision I. A Critique of Absolute Methodological Dualism. 
Deduction and induction as tyfo irreducibly different scientific 
methods of proof (461). 
' Subdivision 11. A Critique of Rationalistic Absolute Methodological 
Monism. Deduction the only scientific method of proof (462). 
a. Pre-Kantian rationalism. Views of Descartes, Spinoza, and 

Leibniz (462). 
h. Rationalism of the " logisticians. " Views of Dedekind, 

Cantor, Frege, Russell, Couturat, Royce, et al. (462). 
c. The rationalistic dialectic. Views of Hegel and McTaggart 
(470). 
Subdivision III. A Critique of Empirical Absolute Methodological 
Monism. Induction the only scientific method of proof (472). 
a. Pre-Kantian empiricism. Bacon to Hume (472). 
h. Post-Kantian empiricism (473). Comte (473), J. S. Mill 
(474), Bergson (475). 
Subdivision IV. Constructive Statement : Critical Empirical Meth- 
odological Monism. {Critical Monism in Methodology.) The 
one scientific method of proof both inductive and deductive (476). 
Views of Kant (476) and Poincar^ (477). Scientific procedure 
(487) ; definitions (488) ; assumptions (488) ; empirical data 
(490) ; fundamental principle (490) ; laws and inductive 
methods (490) ; theory (492) . 
General Conclusion. Critical Monism (494). 



THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE 



THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE 

CHAPTER I 
Introductory: Philosophy and its Principal Problems 

Of all intellectual enterprises philosophy is perhaps the 
most difficult to define. A glance over the course of what is 
called the history of philosophy reveals not only a disappoint- 
ing transitoriness of solutions and lack of unanimity among 
philosophers as to methods and presuppositions, but what is 
much more disconcerting, an almost total shift from time to 
time in the problems themselves. It will not do, however, to 
conclude at once that the grouping together of the problems 
generally called philosophical has been purely arbitrary. 

The resort to etymology for purposes of definition is com- 
monly of doubtful wisdom ; and yet in the present instance it 
puts into our hands a clew which may conduct us through the 
maze of historical transformations to our desired definition. 
The philosopher has been from the first, as his name proclaims 
him, a lover of wisdom; and philosophy has always been, in 
spite of those admirably modest utterances of Pythagoras and 
Socrates, not the love of wisdom simply, but the best wisdom of 
the lover of wisdom. 

But one must not take too rigidly in this connection the 
distinction between wisdom and knowledge. In the beginning 
the term ''philosophy" seems to have been used to cover all 
such knowledge as was not either the common possession of 
the community or the immediate result of some special ex- 
perience of the individual. It was applied to whatever there 
existed of those organized bodies of adequately verified knowl- 
edge, the special sciences, including mathematics. Nor is it 
very long since this broader use of the term was given up. 
Even within the memory of persons still living the physical 
sciences bore the name of ''natural philosophy," and apparatus 

B 1 



2 THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE 

employed for experimental purposes could be referred to as 
''philosophical instruments." One might almost say that 
originally philosophy held all the special sciences in solution, 
and that of late these sciences have been crystallizing out and 
taking on a relatively independent existence. The analogy is 
somewhat misleading, however; in both philosophy and the 
sciences there has been from the beginning a process of growth, 
of creative becoming. 

The special sciences, which have been differentiating them- 
selves out from the matrix of philosophy, are commonly classified 
as abstract, descriptive, and normative. Of these three groups 
the first and last are most readily understood in relation to the 
second, the descriptive sciences. These are constituted of 
generalizations as to the relations of quaHties and processes in 
experienced objects or groups of objects. Astronomy and 
chemistry, biology and anthropology, psychology and sociology, 
will serve to represent the class. The abstract sciences, such as 
arithmetic, geometry, and even mechanics, deal with isolated 
aspects of reality. Their laws are accurate, but essentially 
hypothetical; they state what would be verified in experience 
if the ideal conditions which they assume were ever actualized. 
The abstractness, however, is only relative ; all generalization, 
even such as occurs in the descriptive sciences, is more or less 
abstract, and the propositions of even the most abstract sciences 
are descriptive — with certain provisos — of reality. This is true 
even where, as in the case of the non-Euclidean geometries, the 
provisos are contrary to experience, thus making difficult the 
empirical verification of their conclusions.^ The normative 
sciences, finally, are made up of generalizations, selected from 
the results of the descriptive sciences and organized into a 
system of rules for the realizing of an end. The normative 
sciences which figure most largely in relation to philosophy are 
logic, aesthetics, and ethics, the laws of which are rules for the 
realization of truth (or at least of consistency, which is hypo- 
thetical truth) , beauty, and moral goodness, respectively. Thus, 
while the laws of descriptive sciences are categorical, and 
those of abstract sciences hypothetical, the laws of normative 
sciences are always either categorically or hypothetically im- 

1 See Ch. XX infra. 



INTRODUCTORY 3 

perative. The ''applied sciences" may be regarded in general 
as complex and loosely organized normative sciences. 

But, as the special sciences multiply, what is to become of 
philosophy? As new sciences continue to detach themselves 
from the parent body of philosophy, the question is naturally 
raised as to whether it is not to be expected that as the sciences 
increase, philosophy must decrease, and even as to whether in 
fact philosophy is to be regarded as anything more than the 
rapidly disappearing remainder of prescientific thought? It 
would almost seem that, to quote the words of Windelband, 
''philosophy is like King Lear, who divided all his goods among 
his children, and it must now befall him to be cast out as a 
beggar upon the street." ^ 

But another interpretation of the present situation is possible. 
May it not be that philosophy, as the characteristic wisdom of 
the lover of wisdom, has been finding out by a process of elimina- 
tion, as the sciences develop, just what are its own proper and 
persistent problems? Is it not discovering that its peculiar 
task is not to be a science — not even a "science of the sciences," 
which would be simply another special science, however im- 
portant — but that its main business is to arrive at a wise 
estimate of the world we live in, of ourselves and our ideas, 
and of the wise man's way of living? The philosopher still 
finds much — perhaps more than ever — to occupy his thought 
in questions concerning reality in its broader aspects, con- 
cerning life and its ideals, and concerning the relation between 
these two, reality and ideals. 

It has been recently claimed by the Danish philosopher, 
Harald Hoeffding, that the persistent problems of philosophy 
are four : the problem of consciousness, the problem of knowl- 
edge, the problem of being, and the problem of values. ^ But 
these problems are not all mutually exclusive, and the really 
ultimate problems of philosophy may be reduced to a simpler 
classification. The problem of knowledge, in so far as it tran- 
scends psychology and logic, belongs to the problem of values ; 
it is concerned with estimating intellectual value. The prob- 
lem of consciousness in turn, in so far as it transcends empirical 

^Praeludien, 4th ed., 1911, Vol. I, p. 19. 

« Hoeffding, The Problems of Philosophy, Eng. Tr., New York, 1905. 



4 THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE 

psychology, is reducible in part to the problem of being, and in 
part to the problem of knowledge ; it has to determine on the 
one hand what, in general, consciousness is, i.e. what place it 
has in the realm of being, and on the other hand what it is as 
awareness, i.e. as knowledge. Manifestly, then, Hoeffding's 
philosophical problems may be reduced to the problem of being 
and the problem of values, or, in other words, to metaphysics 
and criticism. 

That all the problems left over from the sciences for " wis- 
dom" or philosophy to deal with are problems of either meta- 
physics or criticism may be confirmed by an examination of 
the historic problems of philosophy. Corresponding to each 
of the normative sciences there is an elementary branch of 
critical philosophy. Thus philosophical logic discusses the 
nature of the ideal or value which the rules of logic as a norma- 
tive science subserve ; its problem is that of the nature of truth. 
Similarly ethics as a branch of critical philosophy is concerned 
with the question. What is moral goodness ? And philosoph- 
ical aesthetics with the problem. What is beauty? One might 
even go farther and speak of the problem of philosophical eco- 
nomics, or. What is wealth ? the problem of philosophical poli- 
tics, or, What is good government? and so on throughout the 
entire list of philosophical counterparts to the normative sci- 
ences. They are all problems of value. 

There are other problems of value, however, besides these 
relatively simple questions as to the nature of valid ideals. 
There are the problems as to the value of certain complex 
actualities, such as human knowledge, human religion, and 
human development in general. These problems give rise to 
those branches of critical philosophy known as epistemology, 
the philosophy of religion, and the philosophy of history. It is 
characteristic of these complex branches of critical philosophy, 
these philosophical critiques of phases of actuaHty, that on 
the one hand they make use of certain sciences, and on the 
other hand they are each intimately related to metaphysics. 
Thus epistemology, in so far as it is concerned with investigating 
what ''knowledge" is, must necessarily make use of psychology 
and logic ; and in so far as it is concerned with estimating 
the worth of our best ''knowledge," it must reach a positive 



INTRODUCTORY 5 

and favorable conclusion, if our metaphysics is not to be re- 
duced to vain imagination. The philosophy of religion makes 
fundamental use of the history and psychology of religion in 
solving the fundamental problems of the nature of the reli- 
gious value or ideal and the essence of religion. It also in- 
cludes, besides this historico-psychological part, an ethical part, 
undertaking to estimate the moral value of religion, and an 
epistemological part, dealing with the value of religious experi- 
ence for knowledge, and especially for knowledge of a religious 
Object. But if the epistemological philosophy of religion 
should result in establishing the validity of religious knowledge, 
a further development of the philosophy of religion would be 
called for, viz. a metaphysical discipline, undertaking to formu- 
late our knowledge of the religious Object in systematic unity 
with the rest of our metaphysical knowledge. The philosophy 
of history also, while drawing upon a vast number of special 
sciences, both descriptive and normative, and especially upon 
descriptive historj^, may be either a branch of critical philos- 
ophy or a metaphysical discipline, or both. Not only is it 
concerned with a critique of progress, the norm of which is 
made up of the ideals established in the other branches of 
critical philosophy; it may include a metaphysical explana- 
tion of this progress as due to some theological or ontological 
principle, such as the will of God, or the evolution of the 
"Absolute Idea." 

But while some philosophical disciplines are thus partly 
critical and partly metaphysical, it would seem that there are, 
over and above problems of criticism, no philosophical problems 
which are not problems of metaphysics, the theory of being, 
or reality. In undertaking to classify these problems of being, 
there is still a good deal to be said for the classic subdivisions, 
viz. ontology, or the philosophy of being in general, and the 
three parts dealing with particular forms of being, viz. psy- 
chology, which, as a branch of metaphysics, deals with the 
nature of the self (soul, mind, spirit) ; cosmology, which deals 
with the fundamental nature of the universe; and theologj^ 
undertaking to set forth the nature of the religious Object. 
More commonly nowadays, however, the problems of meta- 
physics are not grouped together in this manner, but stated 



6 THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE 

separately, as, for example, the problem of mind and matter, 
the problem of contingency and order, the problem of mechan- 
ism and teleology, the problem of the One and the many, the 
problem of good and evil. We do not at this point undertake 
to say whether or not these metaphysical problems can be 
solved without any dependence upon the philosophy of values ; 
but it is quite evident that, with the partial exception of the 
last, they are not themselves problems of value, but problems 
of reality, and such, moreover, as are not capable of being ade- 
quately dealt with in any of the special sciences, whether 
descriptive, normative, or abstract. 

In the present volume our concern is simply with the prob- 
lem of knowledge. Before attacking the particular problems, 
critical and constructive, into which this general problem 
naturally falls apart, a few introductory remarks may be 
offered. Epistemology, let it be frankly admitted at the out- 
set, may be construed either as a science or as a department of 
critical philosophy, or as an aggregate of both. As a descrip- 
tive science it would assume, as all such sciences do, the actual- 
ity of its subject-matter. Assuming, then, that there is such 
a thing as knowledge, and that it is sufficiently accessible and 
distinguishable to be recognized and described, the science of 
epistemology would simply undertake to state the observed 
nature of the various types of knowledge-process, and thus to 
arrive at an adequate empirical definition of knowledge. It would 
necessarily make use of much of the materials also employed 
by logic as a normative science, and might even itself be turned 
into the normative form, in which case its fundamental assump- 
tion would be the possibility of realizing knowledge as an ideal. 
As descriptive science its question is. What is knowledge? or, 
How do we know? As a normative science its question would 
be, What must we do (or experience) in order to know? But 
a further question may also be raised, viz.. Is what we have 
and call our knowledge really what we take it to be? Is our 
''knowledge'' really knowledge? Is knowledge a human possi- 
bility? Now this question cannot be adequately treated by 
merely calling attention to the fact that he who asserts that no 
knowledge is possible has already tacitly assumed what he 
explicitly denies (viz. that some knowledge is possible, if only 



INTRODUCTORY 7 

the knowledge that knowledge is impossible) . There are many 
undogmatic agnostics who desire to be reassured that our best 
human knowledge-values are genuine and may be taken at 
their face value. What is called for is a branch of philosophical 
criticism, the critical evaluation of knowledge-claims. 

This critical philosophy of knowledge is lightly esteemed 
by some recent writers. F. J. E. Woodbridge, for example, 
while making ample room for the theory of perception as an 
experimental science, asserts that the function of philosophical 
epistemology is moral and spiritual only ; it can broaden one's 
spiritual vision and thus modify character, but it can make no 
difference to our knowledge.^ But even if we grant that it is 
quite possible for one to know without knowing that he knows, 
we are not obliged by this admission to subscribe to the generali- 
zation that our knowledge can never be affected by either our 
knowing that we know or our doubting that we know. We 
must not anticipate here the outcome of the discussion upon 
which we are entering, but if there is ever such a thing as knowl- 
edge without the ability to prove what one knows, it would 
seem quite possible that one who originally did know may come 
to doubt his knowledge until it ceases to be knowledge. If 
epistemology can remove such doubts with reference to genuine 
knowledge, it is calculated to affect not only the degree of 
certainty, but ultimately even the content of our knowledge. 

Woodbridge's denial of the knowledge-value of this philos- 
ophy of knowledge-values may be viewed as a rather violent 
reaction against the abuse of critical epistemology which has 
been characteristic of much recent philosophy. For a genera- 
tion or two it has been the custom to saddle upon critical epis- 
temology the task of bearing up a whole system of metaphysics. 
Epistemology may rightly enough pass judgment upon the 
question of the possibility of metaphysics, but to prescribe to 
metaphysics what must be its conclusions as to the nature of 
reality — this is another matter, and does not so manifestly 
lie within the province of a theory of knowledge. As typical 
instances of this too common tendency to exploit epistemology 
in the interests of a particular metaphysical doctrine, we may 

1 "Perception and Epistemology" in Essays Philosophical and Psychological 
in Honor of William James, 1908, especially pp. 140, 151-7, 163-6. 



8 THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE 

cite the philosophical arguments of John Watson and G. T. 
Ladd. In the philosophy of the former, whose position fairly 
represents the absolute idealism recently dominant among Brit- 
ish-American philosophers, epistemology may almost be said 
to be reduced to the old Platonic exposure of the self -refuting 
character of that dogmatic absolute agnosticism which main- 
tains that no knowledge whatever is possible. Not only is the 
fact overlooked that at the root of even the most self-contra- 
dictory statements of dogmatic agnosticism there is real un- 
certainty as to the genuine validity of what we call our knowl- 
edge, and that the essence of agnosticism lies in this inexpugnable 
uncertainty rather than in the dogmatic denial ; what is more 
to the point is the fallacious interpretation of the denial of the 
universal negative as justifying the definite affirmative that the 
universe is intelligible. On this basis it is concluded further, 
by virtue of the ambiguity of one or other of the terms ''in- 
telligible" and ''rational," that the universe is rational and, as 
such, spiritual.^ 

In the philosophy of Ladd the dependence of the content of 
metaphysics upon epistemology is still more marked. His 
epistemology is more elaborately developed than that of 
Watson. Besides the psychological investigation of what it is 
to know, he would include in it an investigation of the guaran- 
ties, limits, underlying logical principles, and metaphysical 
presuppositions of knowledge. ^ It is in undertaking to state 
these "presuppositions or implicates" of knowledge that Ladd 
is led into that sort of dogmatism which has invited such reac- 
tions, almost equally extreme, as that of Woodbridge to which 
we have referred. Starting with the highly dubious assumption 
of a mutually exclusive relationship between the immediately 
experienced and the independently real, this writer, in repudi- 
ating agnosticism, foredooms his theory inevitably (as will 
appear more fully in the chapters immediately following) to a 
dogmatism as absolute but as unnecessary as that dualism 
whose undesirable consequences it attempts to remedy. "To 
know" can only be, from this point of view, "to make an onto- 

1 An Outline of Philosophy, 1898, Pref., p. vi; p. 37; The Interpretation of 
Religious Experience, 1912, Vol. I, p. 74. 
* Knowledge, Life and Reality, 1909, p. 57. 



INTRODUCTORY 9 

logical leap, a spring from the charmed circle of pure subjec- 
tivity into the mystery of the real." This dogmatism is 
veiled under such expressions as that he who claims to know 
exemplifies the confidence of human reason in itself, and pre- 
supposes that something is real and that innumerable real selves 
and real things are known to be existent and to be actually 
related in one world. What we immediately experience, it 
seems to be assumed, is only our conscious experience, i.e. the 
Hfe of the self with its conscious content, no part of which can 
exist independently of the self. Assuming then that we can 
know the independent world at all, we must conclude that it is 
like what we (subjectively) experience ; it must be apprehended 
in terms of ^'a Personal Life." Thus a metaphysical interpre- 
tation of the independently real world is based upon the sup- 
posed necessity of a particular presupposition of the theory of 
knowledge.^ But to put the problem of epistemology thus, 
How is it possible to know what is beyond myself, when any- 
thing, in order to be presented to me, must enter into my con- 
sciousness and thus become a part of my mind? is, as will be 
shown more fully presently, to raise an insoluble problem. To 
suppose that what is forever beyond my subjective experi- 
ence must be like what I subjectively experience, and therefore 
in the last analysis a Personal Life, is simply to advance a 
metaphysical dogma, while leaving the epistemological problem 
unsolved. But the insoluble epistemological problem is surely 
not the true one ; it must surely be due to a confusion of thought, 
to a faulty analysis of the nature of consciousness and the knowl- 
edge-relation. It is a problem not to be taken seriously, but to 
be gotten rid of; its solution can be accompHshed only in its 
dissolution. 

We would surmise, then, that while epistemology must not 
be used as a cloak for metaphysical dogmatism, there is never- 
theless place for a critical philosophy of knowledge which shall 
criticise wrong ways of stating the epistemological problem, as 
well as wrong solutions of the problem when rightly stated, and 
which shall also undertake, if such a thing should prove possible 
consistently with intellectual integrity, to vindicate the jus- 

^lUd., pp. 119-24, 154, 159, 199-206; The Philosophy of Knowledge, 1897, 
pp. 22, 226-7, 366, 571 ; A Theory of Reality, 1899, Chs. XV, XX. 



10 THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE 

tice of the natural human postulate that it is possible for us 
to learn to know reaHty and the truth about it. Without 
epistemology we may know, and not know that we know ; or 
we may not know^, and not know that we do not know. Epis- 
temology will have vindicated its right to exist if it enables us 
to know that we know, when we do know, and to know that we 
do not know, when we do not know. 

The problem of knowledge has two main subdivisions, the 
problem of immediate knowledge and the problem of mediate 
knowledge.^ The former is mainly concerned with the problem 
of acquaintance with reaUty, which is the subject-matter of 
epistemology proper. The latter, the problem of mediate 
knowledge, includes the problem of truth and the problem of 
its proof. All three problems involve the criticism of intellectual 
values, the problem of truth being the main content of logical 
theory, or logic as a branch of philosophical criticism. In 
dealing with the problem of acquaintance, however, much use 
must needs be made of the psychology of perception, while the 
psychology of judgment enters largely into the discussion of the 
problem of truth, and the psychology of reasoning, as well as 
the normative science of logic, into the problem of proof. 

It may be noted that corresponding to the problem of knowl- 
edge in general, and to each of its subordinate problems, there 
is a special problem of knowledge — the problem of the knowl- 
edge-value of religious experience and thought. It seems not 
unreasonable to suppose that an investigation of this special 
problem would prove to be the most interesting part of episte- 
mology ; but we shall not touch upon it in this volume. Our 
present concern is simply with the problem of knowledge in 
general. 

^ Compare Wm. James's distinction between "knowledge of acquaintance" 
and "knowledge-about," The Principles of Psychology, 1890, Vol. I, pp. 221-2. 



PART I: THE PROBLEM OF IMMEDIATE 
KNOWLEDGE 

A. THE PROBLEM OF ACQUAINTANCE 
(EPISTEMOLOGY PROPER) 

1. A CRITIQUE OF DUALISM 



CHAPTER II 

Dualism and Avowed Agnosticism 

In dealing with the problem of immediate acquaintance with 
reality, our procedure will be at j&rst critical. Before attempt- 
ing to set forth our own view, we shall undertake an examina- 
tion of current epistemological theories. A theory of knowledge 
may be either monistic or dualistic, and it may be either realistic 
or idealistic. Epistemological monism is the doctrine that the 
experienced object and the real object are, at the moment of 
perception, numerically one. Epistemological dualism is the 
doctrine that the experienced object and the real object are, at 
the moment of perception, numerically two. Epistemological 
realism is the doctrine that the real object can exist at other 
moments than the moment of perception, or of any other 
conscious experience, and independently of any such experience. 
Epistemological idealism is the doctrine that the real object can- 
not exist at other moments than the moment of perception, or 
of some other conscious experience, nor independently of such 
experience. The combinations of these doctrines which figure 
largely in contemporary philosophical discussion are episte- 
mological dualism and realism, epistemological monism and 
idealism, and epistemological monism and realism.^ Inasmuch, 
however, as we shall have to distinguish sharply our own point 
of view, which is a form of epistemological monism and realism, 
from the current forms of that doctrine, we shall commonly 
employ a slightly different terminology. In distinction from 
the view to be set forth constructively, which may be called 
critical epistemological monism, the doctrines to be criticised 
may be designated, respectively, absolute epistemological dual- 

^ This is the terminology which was employed in the Report of the Com- 
mittee on Definitions at the 1911 meeting of the American Philosophical Asso- 
ciation. The definitions offered above also closely approximate those given in 
that report. See the Journal of Philosophy, Psychology and Scientific Methods, 
Vol. VIII, 1911, p. 703. 

13 



14 THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE 

ism, idealistic absolute epistemological monism, and realistic 
absolute epistemological monism. This terminology has an ad- 
vantage, moreover, in that it indicates more correctly than the 
other the parallel relations of the two types of absolute monism 
to the absolute dualism, and also to the critical monism. If it 
should seem desirable to avoid the term "absolute" in the 
designations employed, the distinctions between the views in 
question might be indicated by the terms epistemological mon- 
ism and critical realism, epistemological dualism and (critical) 
realism, epistemological monism and (dogmatic) idealism, and 
epistemological monism and dogmatic realism. 

Absolute epistemological dualism, then, is the doctrine 'Hhat 
perceived objects and real objects are never the same, though 
the former may be representative of the latter" ; or more fully, 
"that the perceived object and the real object are at the mo- 
ment of perception numerically two, and that the real object 
can exist at other moments independently of any perception," ^ 
or, we may add, of any other conscious experience. 

It must be quite evident that this absolute dualism cannot 
promise much as a theory of knowledge. If what is immedi- 
ately experienced is never independent reality, and independent 
reality is therefore never immediately experienced, how can 
the subject of immediate experience ever know any independent 
reality? Any absolute duaHsm in epistemology is foredoomed, 
it would seem, to agnosticism. By some epistemological dual- 
ists the agnosticism is openly acknowledged and stoutly de- 
fended; others, however, seek to evade this consequence by 
one device or another. In the present chapter we shall con- 
sider some outstanding and typical instances of an absolute 
epistemological dualism accompanied by an avowed agnosticism. 

The most illustrious exponent of absolute epistemological 
dualism is Immanuel Kant. But in order to understand the 
historic foundations of this modern point of view we must go 
back at least as far as John Locke. Locke's Essay concerning 
Human Understanding embodies the result of an inquiry into 
"the original, certainty, and extent of human knowledge," un- 
dertaken, the author informs us, on the supposition "that the 

1 Report of above-mentioned Committee, Journal of Philosophy, etc., Vol. 
VIII, 1911, p. 703. 



I 



DUALISM AND AVOWED AGNOSTICISM 15 

first step towards satisfying several inquiries the mind of man 
was very apt to run into, was to take a survej^ of our own under- 
standings, examine our own powers, and see to what things 
they were adapted." ^ It is assumed at the outset that "the 
object of the understanding when a man thinks," what the 
mind is employed about in thinking, is always an idea in the 
mind of the thinker.^ It is subsequently argued that these 
ideas, of which we are immediately aware, are either simple 
products of the action of external things upon the senses, con- 
veyed by those senses to the mind as a passive receptacle, or 
else such combinations of these simple ideas as result from the 
activity of the mind in reflecting upon the ideas received through 
the senses.^ But it must not be supposed, Locke hastens to 
warn us, that the simple ideas of sensation always exactly re- 
semble the qualities of the external bodies which act upon our 
organs of sense. Only the primary qualities of bodies, qualities 
like soHdity, extension, i&gure, motion or rest, and number, 
wliich are ''utterly inseparable from the body, in what estate 
soever it be," are resembled by our ideas of those qualities. 
All colors, sounds, tastes, smells, and other secondary or sensible 
qualities are ''nothing in the objects themselves, but powers 
to produce various sensations in us by their primary qualities." ^ 
When Locke comes to state the results of this point of view 
in so far as they bear upon his problem of the nature, extent, and 
reality of human knowledge, we find that it is only with difficulty 
that he wins even the appearance of an escape from agnosticism. 
He really has two definitions of knowledge, one being the agree- 
ment of our own ideas with each other, and the other, which he 
illogically makes a subclass of the first, being the agreement 
of our ideas with real existence.^ It is with knowledge in the 
second sense that we are here concerned. Our knowledge of 
real existence, he claims, is of three sorts, viz. : intuitive, of our 
own existence; demonstrative, of God's existence; and sensi- 
tive, "of the existence of particular external objects by that 
perception and consciousness we have of the actual entrance of 
ideas from them." ^ It is with this last that we have occasion 

1 Essay, Bk. I, Ch. I, §§ 2, 7. 2 76., § 8. 

3 Bk. II, Ch. I. 4 Bk. II, Ch. Vin, §§ 8-10, 15. 

e Bk. IV, Ch. I, §§ 2, 7. e Bk. IV, Ch. II, § 14 ; Ch. III. 



16 THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE 

to deal in the present connection. That Locke felt keenly the 
problem as to the possibility, from his point of view, of this 
*' sensitive knowledge," is apparent from his own words. ''It 
is evident," he says, ''that the mind knows not things im- 
mediately, but only by the intervention of the ideas it has of 
them. Our knowledge therefore is real only so far as there is 
a conformity between our ideas and the reality of things." 
"But," he asks, "how shall the mind, when it perceives nothing 
but its own ideas, know that they agree with things them- 
selves?"^ Referring to "simple ideas" derived from sensa- 
tion, his answer is that since these are the product of things 
operating on the mind in a natural way, they produce therein 
"those perceptions which by the wisdom and will of our Maker 
they are ordained and adapted to," and thus necessarily "carry 
with them all the conformity which is intended, or which our 
state requires." ^ Complex ideas of substances, being our own 
product, can only be known to be true when they are made up 
of such simple ideas as are known to coexist in nature. Even 
here, then, he claims, we have knowledge which, while not 
very extensive, is nevertheless real; our ideas, though not, 
perhaps, very exact, are yet true copies.^ Nevertheless it is 
manifestly not as the outcome of his view of the nature of the 
mind and its ideas, but in spite of it, and by reason of his sound 
common sense, that he lets either simple or complex ideas of 
external substances "pass under the name of 'knowledge.'" 
While "going beyond bare probability," all assurance as to 
external objects, since, according to his theory, it falls short 
of either intuitive or demonstrative certainty, "is but faith or 
opinion." ^ 

That there can be no knowledge of the qualities, or even of the 
existence of independent physical bodies on the basis of the 
complete epistemological dualism and passive empiricism of 
Locke's theory was soon made evident through later develop- 
ments of English philosophy. Starting out from the Lockian 
view that all the materials of knowledge are passively received 
by the mind from without in sensation, Berkeley roundly 
denied the necessity of assuming any independent physical 

1 Essay, Bk. IV, Ch. IV, § 3. ^ lb., ^ 4. 

8 lb., § 12. 4 Bk. IV, Ch. II, § 14 ; Chs. XI, XV, § 3. 



DUALISM AND AVOWED AGNOSTICISM 17 

things whatsoever. Hume in turn showed — as far as the 
sceptic can show anything — that upon Locke's principles no 
genuine knowledge of independent, external reality is possible 
at all. '^'Tis impossible upon any system/' he declares, ''to 
defend either our understanding or senses ; and we but expose 
them farther when we endeavor to justify them." "Careless- 
ness and inattention alone can afford us any remedy." ^ This 
agnosticism was the logical outcome of Locke's absolute episte- 
mological dualism. 

Hume's problem was inherited by Kant. ''I confess it 
freely," the latter writes in the oft-quoted passage in the 
Prolegomena to any Future Metaphysic, ''the remembrance of 
David Hume was the first thing which many years ago inter- 
rupted my dogmatic slumber, and gave to my investigations 
in the field of speculative philosophy a quite new direction." 
Thenceforward Kant's problem was how to conserve at the 
same time the good in rationalism without its dogmatism, and 
the good in empiricism without its scepticism. He never gave 
up the rationalistic conviction that validity in things human 
is always to be determined by agreement with those universal 
forms of rational consciousness which — as he continued to 
believe — do not originate from experience, but are inherent, 
a priori. Still, to avoid dogmatism, he recognized as just the 
scientific principle that nothing should be admitted as knowl- 
edge but what has been verified within human experience. 
His chosen philosophical method, by which dogmatism and 
scepticism were both to be avoided, was what he termed 
" criticism," the search for the a priori or rational elements by 
which validity is imparted to empirical judgments. His 
philosophy as a whole is best understood from this point of 
view. It is, in all its parts, the rationalistic criticism of ex- 
perienced values, intellectual, moral, aesthetic, and religious. 
In the Critique of Pure Reason the aim is to vindicate the 
validity of experienced intellectual values by showing the 
a priori element involved in cognitive experience ; the Critique 
of Practical Reason aims to show the validity of experienced 
moral values, by pointing out the a priori element involved 
in moral experience ; for a corresponding purpose the first part 

^ A Treatise of Human Nature, pp. 218, 268. 
C 



18 THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE 

of the Critique of Judgment is concerned with the a priori element 
in aesthetic experience, while the second part of the same work, 
together with the volume entitled Religion within the Limits 
of Mere Reason, attempts the same thing for the values ex- 
perienced in religion, both ''natural" and ''revealed." In 
Kant's critical philosophy, then, as Hans Vaihinger remarks, 
the empiricism is rationalistic, and the rationalism empirically 
conditioned.^ 

In the present discussion our concern is with this combina- 
tion of rationalism and empiricism, in so far as it affected the 
problem of know^ledge. Here it was maintained with the 
rationalist as against the sceptical empiricist that genuine 
knowledge is possible in mathematics and natural science. 
To the sceptic it was conceded, however, in opposition to the 
dogmatic rationalist, that metaphysical knowledge is im- 
possible. The possibility of mathematical, scientific, and 
metaphysical judgments is explained in rationalistic fashion 
as dependent upon the synthetic activity of reason with its 
a priori forms, principles, and fundamental ideas. The 
validity of mathematical and scientific judgments as knowl- 
edge is explained in empirical fashion as due either to the fact 
that they synthesize what is given in sense-experience, as in 
the natural sciences, or else to the circumstance that they set 
forth w^hat, according to the inherent constitution of the per- 
ceptive and thinking faculties, are the necessary forms of all 
possible sense-experience, as in geonaetry. The impossibility 
of arriving at valid metaphysical knowledge, however, is 
explained as due to the fact that the constructions of rational 
psychology, cosmology, and theology go beyond all possible 
human experience and are therefore, as the empirical sceptic 
maintains, pure dogma. Thus there could be no judgments 
at all without the activity of a priori factors. But, on the 
other hand, these judgments do not become knowledge save as 
they embody the materials of sense-experience, or operate 
with the necessary forms of all possible sense-experience. 

On this side of his thought it would seem that Kant not 
only anticipated Comte's positivistic rejection of meta- 
physics and identification of knowledge with science, but 

1 Commentar zu Kants Kritik der reinen Vernunft, 1881, p. 55. 



I 



DUALISM AND AVOWED AGNOSTICISM 19 

that he placed this positivism upon a rationahstic as well 
as an empirical basis. But in this fusion of continental ra- 
tionalism with English empiricism other far-reaching results 
were involved. In a sense Kant may be said to have taken over 
the subjectivism of the Humian empiricism. There is a partial 
truth in Vaihinger's contention that whereas the older rational- 
ism had been combined with objectivism, claiming to be able 
by means of reason to transcend the limits of human experience, 
and while the former empiricism in its final form was combined 
with subjectivism, the philosophy of Kant was a combination 
of rationalism with subjectivism.^ From this point of view 
the only objects known are one's own ideas, the contents of 
one's own consciousness. The rationalistic element gives a 
measure of relief, for while the physical objects known are de- 
pendent upon one's own sensations for their existence, they are 
also dependent upon an activity of mind which operates accord- 
ing to universal cognitive forms, so that to this extent we ex- 
perience our objects according to forms which are universally 
necessary for all possible human experience. It gives us a 
certain measure of consolation in our subjectivity to know that 
all others are in the same predicament; ''misery likes com- 
pany." 

But it is especially important to note that, on the basis of 
this combination of rationalism with the subjectivism of em- 
piricism, not simply the explicit judgment about objects is de- 
pendent upon an activity of mind; experience and all its 
objects, the world of nature itself, — all are products of the 
constructive activity of mind working upon the materials 
furnished through the senses. It becomes necessary to assume 
that all cognitive activity is a synthesis, a construction of 
its object. The understanding does not create its object out- 
right ; materials are furnished it to work upon. But out of 
these materials the human mind constructs the world of nature 

1 Commentar, pp. 50, 52. Vaihinger remarks that the fourth combination, 
that of empiricism with objectivism, is an illogical and impossible one, as was 
demonstrated, he claims, by the outcome of Locke's attempt. This is un- 
doubtedly true when the empiricism is passive, as Locke's was essentially ; but 
whether there may not be developed another critical philosophy, different from 
the Kantian, which will combine, without violence to logic, an activistic empir- 
icism with an objectivistic or realistic epistemology, remains to be seen. 



20 THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE 

and all its laws. This, then, is the Copernican revolution in 
philosophy, as Kant himself called it. As it is due to our posi- 
tion on the earth that the heavenly bodies seem to move around 
us, so it is because of the nature of the a priori forms of our 
sensibility and understanding that we have a world of objects 
existing in space and time, and governed in accordance with 
uniform laws. Or, in other words, just as, according to Coperni- 
cus, it is the movement of the earth in the solar system that 
accounts for apparent motions of the heavenly bodies, so it is 
the activity of our own reason in the world of the senses which 
accounts for the way the world of nature appears to us.^ 

But the question may well be asked whether the Kantian 
revolution in philosophy was as scientific and final as the Coper- 
nican revolution in astronomy. A truce was arranged between 
rationalism and empiricism, but the prospects for a final and 
satisfactory solution of the problem of knowledge were Httle 
brighter as a result of the Kantian criticism. The Humian 
scepticism reappeared in the ultimate agnosticism of the 
Kantian system. Even granting the truth of Kuno Fischer's 
contention ^ that the dependence of the world of nature upon 
human reason was intended to apply only to man as the subject, 
not to man as the object, of knowledge, this is not a real escape 
from subjectivism, but a mere cloak to conceal it ; man as ob- 
ject of knowledge includes all we can say about him as subject 
of knowledge. Kant's failure was also partly obscured by his 
introduction of the concept of "possible experience," which, 
instead of independent reahty, he makes the object of scientific 
knowledge. But '^ possible experience," so far as it goes beyond 
actual experience, is not reality at all ; and Kant was not able 
to dismiss from consideration an independent reality, a ''thing- 
in-itself," which could not be interpreted in terms of possible 
experience, but which must be assumed as the cause of the 
sense-impressions given to the mind from without.^ 

1 See Kuno Fischer's Immanuel Kant, 4th ed., 1898, Vol. I, pp. 8, 9, and 
H. Hoeffding's History of Modern Philosophy, Eng. Tr., Vol. II, pp. 45-6. 

2 Op. cit., Vol. II, p. 541. 

' See, for example, Kritik der reinen Vernunft, 1st ed., p. 565 ; 2d ed., p. 537 ; 
Watson's Selections, p. 184. Also in the Metaphysic of Morality (Hartenstein, 
Vol. IV, 307 ; Watson's Selections, p. 258), the passage, where it is asserted that 
a certain contradiction "disappears if we say that behind phenomena there are 



DUALISM AND AVOWED AGNOSTICISM 21 

According to the principles of the Kantian criticism, this 
reaUty, as forever beyond possible experience, can never be 
known; and yet, while not the object of possible knowledge, 
it is the object of a necessary question. We know that it is, 
and yet can never have valid knowledge of what it is. Thus we 
see that although Kant avoided Locke's view of the complete 
passivity of the mind in perception, he was forced into an episte- 
mological dualism more absolute and an agnosticism more 
critical but more pronounced and complete than that of his 
English predecessor. Even Locke's ''primary qualities" of 
bodies wefe relegated to the realm of mere appearance — al- 
though, within the limits of human experience, of appearance 
universally. 

The completeness of Kant's epistemological dualism and the 
reahty of his realism are perhaps best brought out by the ex- 
pression of his doctrine of the thing-in-itself in terms analogous 
to those which he himself applies to intuitions of sense and ob- 
jects of actual and possible experience. Intuitions and phe- 
nomena, according to Kant, are empirically real (real in experi- 
ence), but transcendentally ideal (not real beyond experience). 
Things-in-themselves, however, in the Kantian doctrine, are 
transcendentally real (real beyond experience), but empirically 
ideal (not real within experience ; nothing but empty ideas, so 
far as experience is concerned).^ 

Neo-Kantian idealists commonly try to eliminate Kant's 
reahsm as a non-essential feature, holding that the thing-in- 
itself is to be interpreted as having been intended as a mere 
''limiting concept," marking the end of the possibility of ex- 
perience and knowledge. But this is true of the thing-in-itself 
only from the standpoint of experience; it is indeed empirically 
ideal. But none the less it is regarded by Kant as transcenden- 
tally real. If neo-Kantianism, i.e. Kantianism without the thing- 
things in themselves, which, though they are hidden from us, are the condition 
of phenomena." From all non-realistic points of view " possible experience " 
is not reality, but simply an abstraction representing past or future experience. 
From the realistic point of view the term may be taken as a not very accurate 
way of denoting independent reality, viz. as that which is, whether experienced 
or not, but which we ordinarily think of as it would be if it were experienced. 

1 At this point I am indebted to C. M. Walsh's articles in Mind, N.S,, XII, 
1903, pp. 454-72 ; XIII, 1904, pp. 54-71. Cf. K. Fischer, op. cit., Vol. II, p. 551. 



22 THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE 

in-itself, were established as valid philosophy, it would be 
legitimate in dealing with opponents of idealism to regard this 
neo-Kantianism as the essence of Kantianism. But if neo- 
Kantianism is itself, like other forms of idealism, as we shall 
maintain (Chs. 'V-IX), untenable, then, in dealing with the 
idealist, the good essence of Kantianism is its realism, whereas, 
when one is defending monistic realism, the had essence of Kan- 
tianism is its dualism and consequent agnosticism. 

The application of the term '' noimienon" to the thing-in-itself 
is to be interpreted in agreement with what has been said. The 
term is not to be interpreted in the Platonic sense as signifying 
reality known by pure reason, although Kant borrows the term 
from Plato. It is rather to be taken as what Plato's noumenon 
becomes in the Kantian dualistic epistemology, viz. mere 
non-phenomenon from the standpoint of human knowledge, and 
yet what might be known through intellectual intuition by some 
superhuman mind. So interpreted, it becomes at once evident 
that the term ^' noumenon '^ is appropriate to designate the thing- 
in-itself, which, while transcendentally real, is empirically ideal.^ 
We conclude, then, that Kant's doctrine is an epistemological 
dualism so absolute as to leave the sphere of reality and the 
sphere of knowledge coincident at not a single point. 

Kant himself made a very notable attempt to overcome this 
agnostic dualism, at least sufficiently for the needs of the moral 
life, in his Critique of Practical Reason. This, however, was at 
best a palhative measure. It sought to relieve one dualism by 
introducing another, viz. the logical dualism of two fundamen- 

1 In the second edition of the Critique of Pure Reason (see Miiller's transla- 
tion, p. 789) Kant says : "If by noumenon we mean a thing so far as it is not 
an object of our sensuous intuition, and make abstraction of our mode of intui- 
tion, it may be called a noumenon in a negative sense. If, however, we mean 
by it an object of a non-sensuous intuition, we admit thereby a peculiar mode of 
intuition, namely, the intellectual, which, however, is not our own, nor one of 
which we can understand even the possibility. This would be noumenon in a 
positive sense." See also Miiller's translation, pp. 206 ff. and 541-2 ; K. Fischer, 
op. cit., Vol. I, pp. 455-9 ; E. Caird, The Critical Philosophy of Kant, Vol. I, 
pp. 318, 649 ; Vol. II, p. 633 ; F. Paulsen, Immanuel Kant (Eng. Tr.), p. 200. 
Riehl seems not to appreciate sufficiently Kant's special use of the Platonic 
terminology. He says: "The idea of noumenon is a practical ideal concept, 
in using which Kant is in evident contradiction with his doctrine of the un- 
knowableness of the thing-in-itself." {Der philosophische Kriticismus, 1879, 
Vol. II, Part II, p. 29.) 



DUALISM AND AVOWED AGNOSTICISM 23 

tally different kinds of truth, the dualism of reason and faith, or 
of theory and practice. For practical purposes we must act as if 
there were realities which, theoretically speaking, we can never 
know. Kant made application of this doctrine only in the realm 
of the moral consciousness. Still, the genuineness of his realism, 
and therefore of his dualism, is indicated by his giving to the 
practical reason the primacy over the pure or theoretical reason. 
A thoroughgoing application of this point of view throughout 
the whole domain of practical intellection was not made, prob- 
ably for the reason that it would have seriously discredited the 
fundamental assumptions of the Critique of Pure Reason, and 
the so-called Copernican revolution would have had to be 
followed by a counter-revolution, which might even have 
amounted to a return to epistemological monism and realism 
over a pathway similar to that being taken by some modern 
pragmatists. As it is, the final word, so far as exposition is 
concerned, would seem to be that Kant was a remarkably con- 
sistent dualist — so consistent, indeed, that he even ventures 
to contradict himself. What is true from one point of view 
(theoretical reason) is false from another (practical reason) ; 
theoretically we have not, practically we have, knowledge of 
independent reality ; not to have contradicted himself at certain 
points would therefore have been in Kant a mark of incon- 
sistency with his logical and epistemological dualism. 

The secret of the Kantian agnosticism lies in the will to be a 
realist, even before any fallacy in subjectivism has been dis- 
covered. It is the lingering presence of the Humian sceptical 
empiricism, which Kant's formal rationalism was never able 
fully to overcome. It is the result of a natural suggestion arising 
from insufficiently critical thought, whose fallaciousness may 
be exposed by its being expressed in syllogistic fashion. Either 
of the following syllogisms may be taken as fairly representative 
of the reasoning that commonly leads to philosophical agnosti- 
cism. What I suppose to be experience of independent reality 
is included within what I experience; but mere sense-im- 
pressions which I do not know to be valid of independent reality 
are also included in what I experience ; therefore what I sup- 
pose to be experience of independent reality is mere sense-im- 
pression, which I do not know to be vaUd of independent reality. 



24 THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE 

Again, what I suppose I know is included in what I think; 
but what I merely think and do not know is also included in 
what I think ; therefore what I suppose I know is what I do 
not know, but merely think. The fallacy in both syllogisms 
is that of reasoning by means of an undistributed middle term, 
and thoroughgoing agnosticism is the inevitable result. A 
measure of apparent relief is obtained by the device to which 
we have already referred, the use of the abstract concept of 
''possible experience" as a substitute for that of ''reality"; 
this, however, simply covers up, but does not solve, the theoreti- 
cal problem. It amounts to the dogged determination to put 
up with the lack of real objectivity in our knowledge, since every 
other human being is obliged to do the same. It is the regarding 
of subjectivity as if it were objectivity, simply on the ground 
that it is a necessary and universal subjectivity. 

There is one further criticism of the Kantian dualism and 
agnosticism which may well be mentioned here, and which 
amounts to the charge that if one will be as agnostic as Kant, he 
must logically be more agnostic still. This was virtually the 
position taken by G. E. Schulze, one of the earliest of Kant's 
critics, who maintained ^ not only that if the categories are not 
to be applied to things-in-themselves, we can have no certain 
knowledge of the existence of such things, but that moreover 
we can have, on Kantian principles, no such knowledge of the 
a priori conditions of human experience as the Kantian criticism 
assumes to be possible. If there is knowledge only when there 
is empirical intuition, there can be no knowledge of an absolutely 
a priori activity; the supposed absolutely a priori conditions 
of experience can never be objects of experience and so are to 
be regarded as unknowable things-in-themselves also. This 
seems to be a valid redudio ad absurdum of the Kantian combina- 
tion of an absolute apriorism with an absolute metaphysical 
agnosticism. One or the other, and in the end probably both, 
must go. 

The influence of Kant upon the development of philosophical 
doctrine since his day has been tremendous. From the per- 
spective of our own day the fundamental divisions of the history 
of modern philosophy are the pre-Kantian, the Kantian, and 

1 ^nesidemus, 1792. 



DUALISM AND AVOWED AGNOSTICISM 25 

the post-Kantian. The great bulk of post-Kantian philosophy, 
moreover, is perhaps most instructively represented as falling 
under one or another of the three following general characteriza- 
tions : first, variations within the limits of the original Kantian 
dualism, with the acceptance of its inevitable agnosticism; 
second, a series of idealistic movements, stimulated and largely 
guided by the Kantian analysis of the a 'priori conditions of 
experience, and claiming to transcend the agnostic difficulty; 
and third, a development of the reahstic side of the Kantian 
dualism, as an expression of the desire to escape from Kant's 
absolute agnosticism as to independent reality. Each of these 
movements represents a way of attacking the problem of the 
thing-in-itself, which Kant bequeathed to those who should 
come after him. The more extremely duaUstic and agnostic 
type of thought has retained the thing-in-itself, holding that 
while we cannot know what it is, we must believe that it is. 
The idealistic movement in its earlier post-Kantian form, typi- 
cally represented by Fichte and Hegel, interpreted the thing-in- 
itself as being just rational thought, with the result that nothing 
else could be so surely regarded as progressively knowable by 
man as could this same thing-in-itself; latterly, however, 
idealism has rejected the thing-in-itself, on the ground that we 
cannot know what it is, and therefore cannot know that it is. 
The less agnostic realistic movement not only retains but seeks 
to describe the thing-in-itself ; it holds that we both know that 
it is, and may gain some real knowledge — indirectly, by in- 
ference from our empirical knowledge — as to what it is. The 
more frankly agnostic tendency we shall deal with in the present 
chapter. The two following chapters will take up the more 
realistic and less agnostic movement. Thereafter we shall 
immediately turn to a critical examination of the various types 
of theoretical idealism. 

Among those, who, following Kant more or less closely, have 
brought into bold relief the agnostic implications of epistemo- 
logical dualism, Hamilton and Spencer, in England, and Riehl 
and Dilthey, in Germany, will chiefly occupy our attention. 
The philosophy of Sir William Hamilton shows the influence 
of Reid's "philosophy of common sense," and in still greater 
degree that of the Kantian dualism of phenomenon and thing-in- 



26 THE PROBLEM OP KNOWLEDGE 

itself. The philosophies of Reid and Kant, however, have about 
as much aifinity for each other as oil and water, and in the 
Hamiltonian doctrine we see sometimes the one ingredient and 
sometimes the other, but never a compound of the two.^ De- 
veloping the Kantian doctrine of the constructive function of 
the understanding in cognition, Hamilton insists that since to 
think is to condition and limit the object of thought, and since, 
of course, thought is involved in all human cognition, the only 
knowable objects are such as are conditioned, limited, modified 
in and through the process of becoming known. Reality, as it 
would be apart from the spatial, temporal, qualitative, causal, 
and other conditions imposed by human thought, is thus for 
man forever unknowable. The following strongly agnostic 
expressions are typical: ''AH qualities, both of mind and of 
matter, are ... only known to us as relations ; we know 
nothing in itself."^ ''Of things absolutely or in themselves 
... we know nothing, or know them only as incognizable. . . . 
All that we know is . . . phenomenal, — phenomenal of the 
unknown." ^ "We may suppose existence to have a thousand 
modes ; but these thousand modes are all to us as zero, unless 
we possess faculties accommodated to their apprehension. But 
were the number of our faculties coextensive with the modes of 
being, — had we, for each of these thousand modes, a separate 
organ competent to make it known to us, — still would our 
whole knowledge be, as it is at present, only relative. Of exist- 
ence absolutely and in itself we should then be as ignorant as we 
are now." ^ 

But while we cannot know what the Absolute or Uncondi- 
tioned is, that it is is a conviction from which we cannot escape. 
As Reid maintained, the original pronouncements of conscious- 
ness, underlying, as they do, all human thought, must be 
accepted as true; and one of these original pronouncements 
is the inescapable conviction that a world exists independently 
of consciousness. "By a wonderful revelation we are, in the 
very consciousness of our inability to conceive aught above 

1 Cf. A. Seth (Pringle-Pattison), The Scottish Philosophy, 1885, p. 149. 

2 Hamilton, Reid' s Collected Writings, 6th ed., 1863, p. 965. 
8 Discussions, p. 608. 

* Lectures, 1st ed., I, 153; 1874 ed., I, 107. 



DUALISM AND AVOWED AGNOSTICISM 27 

the relative and finite, inspired with a belief in the existence of 
something unconditioned beyond the sphere of all comprehen- 
sible reality." ^ 

It is claimed, however — strangely enough, as it may seem — 
that while the categories of human thought are not applicable 
to the Unconditioned, the principles of formal logic nevertheless 
may and must be applied to our thought of that unthinkable 
Reality. According to the Law of Excluded Middle the Un- 
conditioned must be either limited or unlimited, and our choice 
between these two'alternatives is rightly determined by practical, 
ethical considerations in favor of the unlimited Unconditioned, 
or infinite Absolute. Such an Object, while it cannot be con- 
ceived as it is, may be conceived in its relation to the finite and 
conditioned as the human soul is related to the human body. 
But in concluding that we may think of the unconditioned 
Unthinkable as related, and therefore conditioned, Hamilton 
surely comes perilously near to furnishing the redudio ad 
absurdum of his own philosophy .^ Henry Mansel, the most 
important of the close followers of Hamilton, is chiefly remark- 
able for the way in which he developed his master's doctrine 
on the theological side, making the agnosticism an argument for 
a reason-defying, traditionalistic religious dogmatism. 

Herbert Spencer's agnosticism, while not altogether un- 
original, shows the influence of the views of Hamilton and 
Mansel on the one hand, and of the more characteristically 
English thought of John Stuart Mill on the other. The philos- 
ophy of Mill, in turn, might almost be regarded as a synthesis 
of the sceptical empiricism of Hume and the positivism of 
Comte. This important French philosopher should not, how- 
ever, be considered as in any pronounced sense an agnostic or 
a dualist in epistemology. He rejected theology and meta- 
physics, not because he was interested to maintain the un- 
knowableness of God or of ultimate Reality, but rather because 
he regarded both these forms of thought as antiquated and in- 
adequate methods of interpreting the world of nature and of 
man, which is eminently accessible to experience and knowable 

^Discussions, p. 15. Cf. Reid's Collected Writings, pp. 747a, 750a, 7616; 
Lectures, 1st ed., I, 220; IV, 62. 

« Cf. Hoeffding, History of Modern Philosophy, Eng. Tr., Vol. II, p. 390. 



28 THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE 

by the methods of empirical science. In Spencer, then, we seem 
able to trace the sceptically inclined English empiricism, the 
positivistic reduction of philosophy to empirical science, and, 
as mediated by Hamilton and Mansel, the Kantian agnosticism 
with reference to absolute, independent Reality. In the light of 
these antecedents it is easy to appreciate Spencer's arrangement 
of his thoughts on the "first principles" of philosophy under the 
two heads of 'Hhe Unknowable" and the '^Knowable." 

In his philosophy of the Unknowable, Spencer maintains 
that the conflict between science and religion has been partly 
due to the dogmatizing of scientists beyond the proper sphere 
of science. If the scientist is sufficiently critical of his own 
fundamental concepts, "he, more than any other, truly knows 
that in its ultimate nature nothing can be known." "Ultimate 
scientific ideas are all representative of realities that cannot be 
comprehended." Space and time are wholly incomprehensible. 
Taken objectively, they can be conceived neither as entities 
nor as attributes of entities, nor yet as non-entities. Taken 
subjectively, they would be the mere forms of intuition, but we 
have the direct testimony of consciousness that they enter into 
the objective content of intuition. The case is similar with the 
concepts of force and matter. We must, and yet we cannot, 
think of matter as acting on matter through empty space. 
When we consider the concept of consciousness we are again 
face to face with an inscrutable enigma. Objective and sub- 
jective things are alike inscrutable in their substance and 
genesis.^ 

But that human intelligence is utterly incapable of knowing the 
reality which exists behind all appearances, may be exhibited, 
continues Spencer, in other ways besides this experimental 
testing of the ultimate ideas of science, and showing from the 
alternative impossibilities of thought invariably involved that 
all such ideas are mere symbols of the actual, not cognitions of it. 
The same conclusion as to the relativity of knowledge may be 
proved analytically. An analysis of the product of scientific 
thought shows that the particular is always explained by the 
more general, leaving the most general necessarily inexplicable. 
An analysis of the process of thought shows that we know by 

^ First Principles, §§15-21. 



DUALISM AND AVOWED AGNOSTICISM 29 

distinguishing relations, differences, and similarities; from 
which it may be inferred that the Absolute, as that of which no 
necessary relation can be predicated, is unknowable. Once 
more, the same conclusion also follows from the biological view 
of mind. What is true of life in general is true of intellectual 
life in particular. It is a continuous adjustment of internal 
relations to external relations ; each act of knowing is the forma- 
tion of a relation in consciousness answering to a relation in the 
environment, so that the external agency itself is never what is 
within consciousness. But then, all that is required for the 
purposes of life is that the internal actions should correspond 
with the external actions in their coexistences and sequences ; 
knowledge of what the things are in themselves is quite un- 
necessary.^ 

But what Spencer means is not simply that anything beyond 
the relative would be unknowable ; he is equally insistent that 
we must believe that something beyond the relative actually 
exists. ''In the very denial of our power to learn what the 
Absolute is, there lies hidden the assumption that it is ; and the 
making of this assumption proves that the Absolute has been 
present to the mind, not as a nothing, but as a something. '^ 
To say that our knowledge is limited to appearances necessarily 
involves the thought of a Reality of which they are the appear- 
ances, and the very demonstration that a definite consciousness 
of the Absolute is impossible to us unavoidably presupposes an 
indefinite consciousness of it. There is, indeed, as an indefinite 
thought formed by the coalescence of a series of thoughts, and 
forming the basis of our intelligence, an ever present sense of 
real existence, a nascent consciousness of space, for instance, 
beyond those bounds which we definitely imagine, or of a cause 
behind that cause which we have definitely in mind. From the 
impossibility of getting rid of the consciousness of an Actuality 
lying behind appearances, there results our indestructible 
belief in that Actuality .^ 

It was soon pointed out, in criticism of Spencer, that his doc- 
trine of an unknowable Reality behind Appearance was self- 
contradictory, in that the saying what anything is not always 
involves, in some measure, saying what it is. Spencer was 

1/6., §§22-5. 2/6., §26. 



30 THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE 

forced to admit the justice of this criticism; but in reply he 
could only reiterate his former contention, that we cannot say 
anything concerning the non-relative without carrying into our 
propositions meanings connoted by words moulded on the 
relative.^ He was almost within sight of the real solution of 
the problem, however, when he said, ''Unless a real Non- 
Relative or Absolute be postulated, the Relative itseK becomes 
absolute." ^ Why should we not regard the distinction between the 
Relative and the Absolute as itself relative rather than absolute? 
Even an all-inclusive Whole must necessarily exist in relations — 
to its parts. There is, by reason of the imperfection of our 
knowledge, appearance which is to be distinguished from reaUty, 
and thus a relative which is not the absolute ; but is there any 
Absolute which is not essentially relative ? What we mean to 
imply is not subjectivism. The circumstance of anything's 
being relative does not mean that all its being is dependent upon 
its being in the relation of being known by a subject. Its 
being absolute may be relative to some human purpose, but its 
being is not necessarily relative to human purpose. What it 
is, however, does not need to be completely independent of all 
of its relations. If, then, it has not been shown that an Absolute 
cannot be at the same time relative, the a priori arguments of 
Hamilton, Mansel, and Spencer for the unknowableness of the 
Absolute fall to the ground. 

Before turning to a consideration of recent agnostic reaHsm 
among German Kantians, brief reference may be made to two 
EngHsh thinkers whose philosophical views will be discussed 
more fully in other connections, viz. F. H. Bradley and S. H. 
Hodgson. Bradley is noteworthy in this connection as having 
driven absolute idealism, under the lash of logical criticism, 
almost to the verge of the Spencerian agnosticism. His Ab- 
solute, so strongly contrasted with all appearances, is all but 
identical with Spencer's ''Unknowable." Hodgson, with his 
conception of experience becoming what we later recognize as 
reality, made an earnest effort to establish his metaphysics 
upon the ground of an epistemological monism ; but he did not 
quite succeed. On the one hand he argues that in the process 
of consciousness the object of consciousness is formed, but on 

1 First Principles, Postscript to Part I. ^ lb., § 26. 



DUALISM AND AVOWED AGNOSTICISM 31 

the other hand he is forced to admit that matter, as we know it, 
has conditions beyond those of our own consciousness, and that 
therefore sense-data are evidence of a reahty that is non-con- 
sciousness.^ So long as he adheres to epistemological monism, 
he is committed, as we shall see (Ch. VI), to what is virtually a 
disguised subjective idealism; so soon as he acknowledges 
realism, he lapses into epistemological dualism. He is thus 
forced to hover perpetually in unstable equilibrium between 
subjectivism and agnosticism. 

Among contemporary exponents of Kantian doctrine there is 
perhaps no one who so faithfully clings to the essentials of his 
master's position as does Alois Riehl. He frankly assumes 
realism in combination with an absolute dualism in epistemology 
at the outset, and adheres to this point of view with remark- 
able consistency throughout the entire course of his thought. 
*'I take the realistic hypothesis," he says, ''as my point 
of departure; I assume that something different from and 
independent of consciousness exists." ^ This is assumed as 
founded in a feeling of real existence other than appearance, 
that cannot be driven from even the most elementary form of 
our conscious life.^ But it is involved in this realistic assump- 
tion that the objects of our experience, which are, as such, 
dependent upon our consciousness, are doubly dependent, 
because consciousness is itself an appearance of something 
beyond it. Objects, then, are functions of functions, appear- 
ances within an appearance.^ 

Or we might proceed the other way about. Finding the marks 
of relativity upon both consciousness and the objects appearing 
within it, we would be compelled to assert an existence beyond 
consciousness. The evidence for the existence of relative forms 
is necessarily at the same time the proof of an existence which 
is not relative, i.e. of the Absolute. The idea of a thing-in-itself 
is indispensable for one who does not wish to regard his sensuous 
presentations as groundless.^ This thing-in-itself, moreover, 
is quite unknowable. Through the phenomenon of presenta- 

^ "Matter," Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Vol. II, Part I, 1891-2, 
pp. 20, 24. 

2 Der philosophische Kriticismus, 1879, Vol. II, Part I, p. 18. 

3 /6., Part II, pp. 60-1. * 76., Part I, p. 18. 
»/&., Part I, pp. 18, 19; Part II, pp. 28-9. 



32 THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE 

tion we are always necessarily separated from everything as it is 
in itself.^ 

We never experience or know the physical apart from the 
psychical, nor the psychical apart from the physical. Every 
relation perceived or presupposed among things is primarily a 
relation among our sensations.^ Indeed the thing, as we know 
it, is a constant group of sensations.^ Physical laws are funda- 
mentally laws of our sense-experience — not mine simply, but 
ours ; they state the experientially permanent similar conditions 
under which we obtain certain sense-experiences. They give 
no information regarding independent reality, for our different 
sensations are not signs of a process taking place in the thing-in- 
itself ; they are signs only of each other .^ Process and place 
are themselves simply phenomenal and relative.^ Atoms are 
the products of thought abstracting from the particular con- 
ditions of perception ; it is only through careless thinking that 
they are regarded as things-in-themselves.^ Indeed, although 
we have absolute knowledge that the thing-in-itself is, we are left 
in absolute ignorance of what it is. All our knowledge of prop- 
erties is relative. Properties are dependent upon conscious- 
ness, but existence is not dependent upon it; rather is con- 
sciousness dependent upon existence. Of the being of the object, 
as of the being of the subject, we have absolute knowledge. 
Cogito ergo sum et est. But of the object's being object, as of the 
subject's being subject, our knowledge is but relative.'^ 

It follows, of course, that Riehl's attitude toward science on 
the one side and metaphysics on the other is what might be 
described as critical or Kantian positivism.^ Metaphysics, as 
knowledge of ultimate reality, cannot be obtained by the 
methods of induction, which apply to phenomena only. There 
is no place for metaphysical hypotheses, for it is only in ex- 
perience that hypotheses can be verified. Metaphysical knowl- 
edge, therefore, can come only through pure reason, if at all. 
But an examination of metaphysical attempts reveals the fact 
that it is always some prominent individual characteristic of 

^ Der philosophische Kriticismtis, Part II, p. 29. ^ 75.^ p. 30. 

» lb., Part I, p. 202. * lb., Part II, pp. 33, 151. 

8/6., p. 312. « 76., pp. 31-2. 

7 lb., pp. 130, 147, 150, 153, 297. « Cf. op. cit., Part II, p. 149. 



DUALISM AND AVOWED AGNOSTICISM 33 

thought or of experienced reahty which is raised to the status of 
a metaphysical idea and made all dominant in the system. 
Metaphysical hypotheses, therefore, producing, as they do, the 
illusion of an all-comprehensive knowledge, are simply opiates 
for the understanding.^ Metaphysical systems are philosophi- 
cal romances ; the heart, not the understanding, is their special 
creator ; they belong to faith, not to science.^ In reality, science 
and a valid theoretical philosophy are one and the same.^ In 
so far as there is any task which is peculiarly philosophical, it is 
the winning of a scientific knowledge of scientific knowledge 
itself.'^ In general, the philosophical task of our time is the 
elevation of science itself to philosophy, the making of science 
philosophical and philosophy scientific.^ 

Riehl is consistent, as we have admitted ; but, in assuming a 
position necessarily agnostic, he is fundamentally dogmatic. 
Obviously agnosticism is not to be accepted, if it can be legiti- 
mately avoided ; and RiehFs system, however interesting and 
instructive, is not to be chosen if any non-agnostic realism 
equally or more tenable can be discovered. Moreover, such 
assertions as that the objects of experience are, as such, de- 
pendent on our consciousness,^ and that things are constant 
groups of sensations,^ show that Riehl is driven to agnostic 
realism — as a substitute for subjective idealism, which is 
undesirable, and for a non-agnostic realism, which is unattain- 
able — by his having fallen a victim to the fallacious suggestion 
that what is experienced must be itself experience, that what is 
thought about can itself be nothing but thought.^ 

Wilhelm Dilthey, although making room for a philosophy 
of reality, nevertheless occupies essentially the same agnostic 
position as Riehl ; all theoretical supports of metaphysical con- 
struction are, in his opinion, worthless. In his Einleitung in die 
Geisteswissenschaften he indicates his negative attitude toward 
metaphysics, which, he claims, ''does not overcome the rela- 

1 lb., pp. 85-6. 

2 Ueber wissenschaftliche und nicht-wissenschaftliche Philosophie, 1883, pp. 
8, 12. 

» Der phil. Krit, Vol. II, Part II, p. 120. 
* Ueber wissenschaftliche, etc., p. 36. 
5 Der phil. Krit, Vol. II, Part II, p. 120. 

« 76., Part I, p. 18. ^ 75.^ p, 202. » Cf. supra, pp. 23-4. 

D 



34 THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE 

tivity of the sphere of experience" and "the subjectivity of the 
psychicaHife." ^ ''Epistemology is the end of the course of 
metaphysics," ^ for surely "no one can even want to know how 
the external object appears when no one takes it up in his con- 
sciousness." ^ In his essay entitled, "Das Wesen der Philoso- 
phie" ^ he gives to philosophy a place alongside of poetry and 
religion, as dealing with the same riddles of the world and of 
life.^ Philosophy, as metaphysics, differs from religion and 
poetry, in that it attempts to raise some particular world-view 
to universal validity,^ but its task is insoluble.'^ Individuality, 
circumstances, nation, and period influence the philosopher as 
well as the poet and the religionist.^ Materialism, objective 
idealism, and the idealism of freedom are the chief forms of world- 
view,^ but none of these is demonstrable. A restless dialectic 
drives the thinker on from one of these views to the other.^" In 
the end only a personal, heart-felt conviction remains to sup- 
port any philosophical system,^^ and that in turn is largely de- 
termined by the system of culture environing the individual.^^ 
When fully critical, then, philosophy becomes simply Weltan- 
schauung slehre, a discipline which is essentially akin to the 
history of philosophy, and whose task it is to solve the contra- 
diction between the claim of philosophical systems to universal 
validity and the endless individualism of such systems, by bring- 
ing to light the relation of the human spirit and its experiences 
to the riddle of the world and of life.^^ 

In closing this discussion of the frankly agnostic epistemologi- 
cal dualists, then, we may state the epistemological problem as 
follows : Is agnosticism the necessary implicate of epistemologi- 
cal dualism? This question we shall have to consider further, 
in the light of a critique of those systems which claim to avoid 
the agnosticism while retaining the dualism.^'^ If it should turn 



1 Pp. 513-14. 2 p. 516. 3 p. 502. 

4 Die Kultur der Gegenwart, I, Part VI. b p. 35. 

6 Pp. 55, 57. 7 p, 60. 8 P. 57. 

' P. 59. Cf . Die Typen der Weltanschauung und ihre Ausbildung in den meta- 
physischen Systemen in Max Frischeisen-Kohler's (ed.) Weltanschauung. 

10 Die Typen, etc., p. 50. " P. 51. 12 Das Wesen der Philosophic, p. 68. 

13/6., pp. 37-8, 62. See Max Frischeisen-Kohler's "Wilhelm Dilthey als 
Philosoph," Logos, III, 1912, pp. 29-58. 

1* Chs. Ill and IV, infra. 



DUALISM AND AVOWED AGNOSTICISM 35 

out that agnosticism is necessarily involved in the dualism, 
manifestly, then, the dualism itself ought not to be accepted, 
provided it can be avoided with intellectual honesty and without 
the necessit}^ of a still more undesirable alternative. The prob- 
lem will then be to discover some better alternative. 



CHAPTER III 
Dualism and Attempted Metaphysics 

Besides the followers of Kant who, like those whose 
doctrines we have examined in the preceding chapter, frankly 
confess the agnosticism which seems to be involved in the epis- 
temological dualism, and those others, to be dealt with in our 
critique of idealism, who undertake to eliminate the agnosticism 
by cancelling the thing-in-itself, thus denying the dualism and 
at the same time the realism, there is the third class of followers, 
who seek to avoid the agnostic conclusion while holding on to 
the dualistic premises. Although assuming that we never have 
immediate experience of any reaUty which exists independently, 
they maintain that the thing-in-itself is not entirely beyond our 
knowledge, but that we are in a position to know not only that 
it is, but also to some extent what it is. This group may be sub- 
divided into two minor groups. In one of these would be in- 
cluded philosophers who, when taken either individually, or 
two or more together, represent a movement of thought begin- 
ning with a pronounced realism and seeking to overcome the 
agnosticism of dualism by proceeding in the direction of idealistic 
metaphysics. On the other hand there are those who begin by 
paying their respects to the idealistic side of the Kantian 
thought, but then proceed to develop a positive doctrine of the 
thing-in-itself in the direction of non-idealistic metaphysics. 
Our best illustration of the one movement will be found in the 
systems of Herbart and Lotze, taken together, and of the other 
either in the transition from Schopenhauer to von Hartmann or 
in that from Wundt to Kuelpe. In the present chapter we shall 
be concerned with the former movement, leaving the latter to 
be dealt with in the chapter following. 

Before entering upon our examination of the systems of Her- 
bart and Lotze we may refer briefly to certain thinkers who, 
either in their criticism or in their further development of the 

36 



DUALISM AND ATTEMPTED METAPHYSICS 37 

Kantian realism, seem to have been feeling after a positive knowl- 
edge of the thing-in-itself . We shall speak of Jacobi, Reinhold, 
and Fries. Jacobi would substitute for the Kantian theoretical 
agnosticism and claim of practical knowledge or moral faith 
with reference to the thing-in-itself, a speculative faith with 
reference to ultimate reality. He was the first to attack the 
Kantian combination of realism with agnosticism. Without the 
realistic postulate of a causal nexus between the subject and a 
reality beyond experience, one could not, he claimed, enter into 
the Kantian system; but if one were to develop the implica- 
tions of that idea of a causal nexus, he could not remain a Kan- 
tian.^ He held that we could not demonstrate even the existence 
of the thing-in-itself, and yet he regarded it as a self -destructive 
course to will to believe simply what one needs to believe. He 
advanced the view, however, that through a faculty which at 
first he called faith as opposed to reason, and later reason as 
opposed to the understanding, we have an immediate conviction 
or apprehension of the suprasensible. Formally this was a 
repudiation of epistemological dualism, but it did not quite 
amount to a realistic epistemological monism. Rational faith 
might be assured of independent reality, but the understanding 
was necessarily sceptical ; and what was claimed was not an 
immediate experience of independent reality, but an immediate 
conviction of a reality forever transcending experience. It 
amounted to little more than a dogmatic declaration of faith. 

Reinhold's view of the nature of consciousness had certain 
realistic implications which might have led him to claim positive 
knowledge of the thing-in-itself, had it not been for his ac- 
ceptance of the Kantian account of the ''form" and "ma- 
terials" of consciousness. In beginning his Versuch einer 
neuen Theorie des menschlichen Vorstellungsvermogens,^ he claims 
that since before we can expect to have a universally convincing 
philosophy we must have one that is universally valid, there is 
suggested the necessity of inquiring how universally valid 
knowledge is possible. But prior to answering this we must 
ask within what limits knowledge is possible at all ; and before 
answering this in turn, what one is to understand by knowing 
and the ability to know.^ This, then, is the most fundamental 

1 Werke, II, 304. 2 x789. » §§ i_5. 



38 THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE 

philosophical problem, and Reinhold's solution of it is offered 
as ''elementary philosophy." This solution is to the effect 
that knowing is, in all its forms, an activity of a subject with 
reference to an object, a presentation or representation, which, 
as an activity, is to be distinguished from the representing sub- 
ject and the represented object.^ The Kantian *' sensibility, '^ 
''understanding," and "reason" are to be interpreted as variant 
forms of this representation of an objective reality by an 
equally real subject. ^ But this promising beginning was 
hindered from becoming a positive or non-agnostic realism by 
Reinhold's acceptance of the Kantian view of the subjective 
origin of the "form," or "primary qualities" of objects, and the 
objective origin of their sens.e-materials, or "secondary quali- 
ties." ^ Since the subject with its forms cannot produce the 
matter of the representation of the object, there must be the 
so-called thing-in-itself to account for that sense-material. 
This thing-in-itself, however, being simply the cause of the data of 
sense, is no more representable than is the representing subject 
itself.^ But that Reinhold himself was not satisfied with this 
agnostic conclusion is shown by his later adherence to the sub- 
jective idealism of Fichte, then to Jacobi's combination of epis- 
temological dualism with dogmatic realism, and finally to the 
dogmatic, rationalistic realism of Bardili, who claimed that the 
laws of nature on the one hand and the laws of the association of 
ideas in man's logical thinking on the other, are the necessarily 
corresponding manifestations of the one Absolute Reason which 
is fundamental to both the objective world and the consciousness 
of man. 

J. F. Fries is another of the earher followers of Kant who 
might have developed a positive or non-agnostic critical realism, 
if it had not been for an inherited element in his philosophical 
creed which made such an issue impossible. He adopted the 
rationalistic Kantian and pre-Kantian doctrine of a non-intuitive 
and yet unmediated, and, therefore, supposedly, absolutely 
a 'priori element in all our knowledge. For example, one knows 
a priori and with absolute certainty that every change must 
have a cause; this is not an intellectual intuition, because it 
does not come explicitly to consciousness without reflection; 

1 § 7. 2 §§ 9-11, 48, 67, 77. « §§ 15, 16, 18-20. < § 17. 



DUALISM AND ATTEMPTED METAPHYSICS 39 

and yet the knowledge does not originate out of the reflective 
process.^ But while agreeing with Kant that such knowledge 
is a priori, Fries differed from his master in maintaining that 
these a priori forms could be discovered only a posteriori, by 
psychological observation and abstraction, resulting in the for- 
mation of concepts corresponding to the a priori forms of ab- 
soluteh'- certain knowledge. Here space and time are included, 
as well as substance, cause, and the other categories of Kant's 
list. Thus the true critique of reason would be one of the em- 
pirical sciences, a sort of inner anthropology .^ As against the 
more orthodox Kantians, who held that the critique of reason 
must not be made an empirical science, for the reason that 
validity can be guaranteed only to the empirical sciences by 
means of the critique of reason. Fries objected that the question 
as to the possibility of knowledge was not a proper theme for 
any theory or discussion whatsoever. The supreme principle 
of all processes of human judgment, he claimed, was that of 
the self-trust of human reason ; this is involved in the critique 
of reason as necessarily as in any other scientific investigation.^ 
Indeed, in opposition to Kant, Fries held that the objective 
validity of experience cannot be proved ; we must use certain 
categories, but there is no way of showing further that we are 
justified in doing this. He agrees with Kant, however, that 
human knowledge is never transcendent, but always purely 
immanent, empirical. We have no knowledge of anything 
beyond the sensible ; the a priori forms are simply imposed upon 
the sense-material, and if reality is known at all, it is only as it is 
given in sensuous intuition. Truth is simply the agreement of 
mediate or discursive knowledge with that of immediate per- 
ception; it is not agreement of our mediate knowledge with 
existence. Our spatial, temporal, and causal concepts give us 
no completed series; we never transcend the relative and 
limited, the world of phenomena. Indeed, even the existence of 
the thing-in-itself is not known. Nor are we to seek refuge in 
practical postulates ; the primacy of the practical reason is not 

^ "Ueber das Verhaltnis der empirischen Psychologie zur Metaphysik," 
Psychologisches Magazin, III, 1798, p. 181 ; Neue Kritik der Vernunft, § 95. 
Cf, Leonard Nelson, Ueber das sogenannte Erkenntnisproblem, 1908, § 162. 

2 " Ueber das Verhaltnis," etc., pp. 175-6, 181. Cf. Nelson, op. cit., §§ 154-5. 

3 Neue Kritik, §§ 89, 131. Cf. Nelson, op. cit., §§ 158, 163, 165. 



40 THE PROBLEM OP KNOWLEDGE 

given in sense-experience, and is therefore no part of our knowl- 
edge.^ 

But while Kant held that the thing-in-itself is simply the ob- 
ject of a necessary question, unknowable save as we are enabled 
to postulate certain beliefs on practical grounds, Fries main- 
tained that we have an assured speculative faith as to its exist- 
ence. What it is, however, we can only describe in negative 
terms. By negating the positive categories involved in our 
knowledge of the finite, we arrive at as many negative ideas as 
there are positive categories; and taking all these together, 
we get the purely negative idea of the unlimited, the infinite. 
Thus, by simply conceiving the limits of our knowledge of 
reality transcended, or, in other words, by thinking of reality 
(which we know under the necessary limitations imposed by 
our experience) as we do not know it, viz. as an absolute totality, 
we arrive at our speculative faith in the existence of the Abso- 
lute, or Thing-in-itself.2 

But while the sensible is the object of knowledge, and the 
suprasensible the object of faith. Fries adds that we have a 
feeling, or presentiment (Ahndung), of the manifestation of the 
suprasensible in the sensible. This presentiment is present in 
both the aesthetic and the religious consciousness ; the beautiful 
and the adorable are taken as a revelation of the infinite in 
the finite. It must not be concluded, however, that the lan- 
guage of art or of religion can ever be literally true of the Ab- 
solute. It is mere symbol, figure of speech; it describes the 
suprasensible in terms of the sensible. To regard this as knowl- 
edge is to construct a mythology. And yet it is one and the 
same reality which is known by science as the finite world of 
phenomena, truly thought of by speculative faith as in itself 
unlimited and therefore not positively conceivable, and repre- 
sented symbolically by religion and art as if it were an object of 
sensuous experience.^ 

The philosophy of Fries thus turns out to be thoroughly agnostic 
with reference to independent reality. We cannot even know, 

1 Neue Kritik, §§ 123, 129; Wissen, Glaube und Ahndung, pp. 67 £f., 72 ff., 
155 ff., 164 f. Cf. Nelson, op. cit., § 164-5. 

^ Neue Kritik, §§ 123, 124, 129; Wissen, Glaube und Ahndung, passim. 
' Glaube, Wissen und Ahndung. 



DUALISM AND ATTEMPTED METAPHYSICS 41 

although we do undoubtedly believe, that this Absolute exists. 
The remedy for this agnostic conclusion might have been found 
in a certain departure from the presuppositions, as well as from 
the method, of Kant. We have no quarrel with Fries for using 
the empirical method in seeking to discover the a priori element 
in human knowledge; our objection is to the presupposition of 
both Kant and Fries that it is absolutely a priori, that neither 
in the individual nor in the race has it come to be what it is, 
viz. relatively a priori, as .a result of past experience. It would 
not help to suppose that the a priori forms had been passively 
received by man from without ; but if these forms of cognition 
by the human subject have been actively moulded upon the in- 
dependent reality of the environment, their value for the knowl- 
edge of that reality can be maintained. The further develop- 
ment of this view belongs, however, to later chapters ; ^ all we 
are here interested to maintain is that every absolute apriorism 
of the categories, when combined with a critical rather than a 
dogmatic attitude, leads to agnosticism, just as inevitably as 
does the old Lockian empiricism, with its notion of the complete 
passivity of the mind in perception.^ 

Among the early disciples of Fries were Schleiden, Apelt, 
and the theologian, DeWette. At the present time a note- 
worthy attempt is being made, under the leadership of Leonard 
Nelson, of Gottingen, to revive the Friesian philosophy. Nel- 
son differs from his chosen master chiefly in his understanding 
of the nature of the reflective process through which the a 
priori elements in human knowledge are discovered. What he 
objects to is the description of reflection as a sort of self-observa- 
tion, or inner experience, by means of which intuitive knowledge 
is repeated, or originally obscure consciousness brought to light. 
He claims that Fries virtually reasons that since we first be- 
come aware of our knowledge through inner perception, we 
must therefore proceed psychologically in philosophy. Strictly 

1 XIV and XVI, infra. 

2 There is an absolute a priori, of which, as a factor, experience is the result, 
but it is not the a priori meant by Kant ; much less is it that of Fries. It is 
the absolutely new and creative factor in experience. The a posteriori is the 
old, the result of experience, and includes within itself the oldest, the relatively 
a priori. It is this relatively a priori alone that is in some sense innate, pre- 
existent. See Chs. XIV and XVI, infra. 



42 THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE 

interpreted, this would not only make metaphysics as well as 
criticism purely psychological; it would even make criticism 
itself unnecessary. True and false judgments, critical and 
dogmatic assertions, are all alike psychological. According to 
Nelson the process of investigation whereby the general a priori 
element in particular acts of knowledge is discovered, while 
empirical and inductive, as Fries maintains, is fundamentally 
logical rather than purely psychological in its character. In 
this way he would undertake to restore something of the Kantian 
transcendentalism, thus to relieve the Friesian criticism of its 
undue psychologism. It is a modification in the realistic 
direction, a securing of the epistemological dualism of the sys- 
tem, as distinguished from all forms of idealistic epistemological 
monism. 

Thus Jacobi, Reinhold, and Fries, each by a different path, 
sought escape from the Kantian agnostic dualism. They all 
set out in the direction of a positive or non-agnostic realism, 
whereby it might be maintained that knowledge of independent 
reality is possible. They all failed to reach their goal, however ; 
they conceded too much to Kant at the outset, and meta- 
physical agnosticism clings to them still at their journey's end. 
We now turn to the typical representative of the older critical 
realism, J. F. Herbart. While retaining the Kantian episte- 
mological duahsm of appearance and reality, phenomenon 
and thing-in-itself, Herbart claimed to pass from experience to 
independent reality, thus relieving the agnosticism of the earlier 
critical philosophy. Whereas Kant had essayed to cross the 
gulf between appearance and reality on the postulates of the 
moral consciousness, and Jacobi and Fries on one form or another 
of speculative faith, Herbart laid claim to speculative knowledge 
of the thing-in-itself, on the basis of a rational criticism of our 
empirical knowledge of phenomena. His method, he insists, 
is simply to follow out more thoroughly the procedure of the 
natural sciences, correcting the contradictory character of what 
is experienced by positing, back of phenomena, a reahty which 
is itself free from contradiction. But whereas the sciences are 
still content to work with forms and categories that lead to 
antinomies of thought, we must eliminate space, time, change, 
and multiplicity of attributes in one substance, as involved in 



DUALISM AND ATTEMPTED METAPHYSICS 43 

contradiction and thus shown to be ultimately unreal. Phenom- 
enal space and time, it may be argued, are both finite and 
infinite ; change and multiplicity of attributes involve the asser- 
tion that a thing can be what it is not. Reality must therefore 
be thought of as made up of a large number of absolutely inde- 
pendent and unchangeable real beings, each having but one 
quality and existing in changeable external relations in an "in- 
telligible" order, as distinguished from the spatial -temporal 
order of phenomena. What appears to us as a substance with 
many qualities is in reality a combination of many independent 
substances of one quality apiece. What seems to be a change 
of substance is in reality but a change in the external relations 
of substances ; there are no relations internal to, or belonging 
to the essence of, any substance. Continuity is but a false ap- 
pearance of the eternally and absolutely discrete. One of 
these independent "reals" is the individual human soul. Sen- 
sations and other " Vorstellungen " are the forms of its appear- 
ance as it maintains itself in its changing relations with other 
real beings. The soul is not to be identified with the ego with 
which psychology deals ; this latter is a combination, and there- 
fore a result, of those representations which are themselves the 
product of the soul.^ 

But apart from the assertion of plurality, simplicity, un- 
changing essence, and changing relations, Herbart is agnostic 
with reference to independent reality. We know that these 
reals exist, he claims, because appearances exist, and there 
cannot be appearances without there being something which 
appears. But what the peculiar quality of any one of these in- 
dependent reals is, we are never able to say. Even of the soul 
all we know is that it is one of the independent reals ; we have 
no knowledge of what it is in distinction from any other being. 
But one may go further and say that even this slight escape 
from the agnosticism of epistemological dualism is itself a mere 
appearance, and not reality. As has been often remarked, the 
independent reals are mere products of abstraction from all 
particular qualities of phenomenal objects, and as such residues 
of abstraction we have no sufficient reason to affirm their 

^ Einleiiung in die Philosophie; Hauptpunkte der Metaphysik ; Allgemeine 
Metaphysik. 



44 THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE 

reality. Herbart's metaphysics, in view of his admission that 
we have no direct experience of reahty, is simply a return to the 
rationalistic dogmatism of the eighteenth century. If we never 
have any direct experience of a reality which exists indepen- 
dently of our experience of it, we have no means of verifying our 
speculations concerning the thing-in-itself. To eliminate con- 
tradiction from our speculations is only to establish hypothetical 
possibility, not actuality. Any theory that enters not in 
through the door of a bona fide experience of reality, but climbs 
up some purely speculative way, is a thief and a robber when it 
takes to itself the name of knowledge. We said that Herbart's 
apparent escape from agnosticism was very limited; we may 
now say that, in view of his initial absolute dualism of reality 
and appearance, he makes no legitimate escape from agnosticism 
at all. 

R. H. Lotze will be mentioned in another connection as illus- 
trating the transition from monistic absolute idealism to pluralis- 
tic personal idealism. But his fundamental position in epis- 
temology is dualistic realism. His main philosophical interest, 
however, seems to have been metaphysical rather than episte- 
mological. He is not concerned to dispute the main features 
of the critical philosophy, but he does not think it necessary that 
we should undertake a critique of human reason before venturing 
to use our rational powers in the attempt to discover the nature 
of realit}^ Broadly speaking, his assumptions, his purpose, 
and his method are those of Herbart. Dissatisfied with Her- 
bart's results, especially with his valueless view of existence, 
Lotze would do the work over again. He endeavors to overcome, 
more fully than his predecessor was able to do, the agnosticism 
of epistemological dualism, and at the same time to provide 
in his world-view for the preservation of the values of the spir- 
itual life. His method is neither deduction from a set of first 
principles, nor mere empirical investigation, nor even the formal 
adoption of the dialectical procedure. He starts with the 
realism of the plain man, revised by the sciences, and under- 
takes by the method of first criticising fundamental concepts 
and eliminating contradictions, and then offering analogies 
drawn from personal life as the only way of escape from agnosti- 
cism, to ''ascertain the impalpable real basis of the possibility 



DUALISM AND ATTEMPTED METAPHYSICS 45 

of all phenomena, and of the necessity of their concatenation." ^ 
Our present interest in his thought will centre in the question 
to what extent he has succeeded where Herbart failed, in the 
endeavor to avoid the besetting agnosticism of absolute epistemo- 
logical dualism and to attain to a genuine knowledge of the 
nature of reality. 

He begins by investigating what we mean when we say that 
things are. In opposition to Berkeley he takes the realistic 
view : to be does not mean to be perceived ; on the contrary, 
it means to exist independently of the knowing relation. But in 
opposition to what he understands to be the contention of the 
realist Herbart, he insists that to be does not mean to exist 
independently of all relations. A thing which neither exists 
in any place nor at any time, and which neither does nor suffers 
anything, is as if it were not. To be does not mean to stand 
in the particular relation of being perceived, but it does mean 
to stand in relations.^ In opposition to Herbart, again, a thing 
is not to be identified with a single quality, any more than with 
a sum of perceived qualities. Qualities are ascribed to things, 
and when we say that a thing some of whose perceptible 
qualities have changed is still the same thing, this is not, as 
Herbart maintains, a self-contradiction; however it may 
accentuate our problem, it must be acknowledged that a thing 
is a unit}^ in multiplicity, a permanent identity of essence in 
the midst of the changing qualities.^ Still, we must not, with 
Herbart, adopt the substantive conception of the Real pure 
and simple. Real is an adjectival conception, a title belonging 
to everything that changes in a regular order. Reality is 
simply a form in which content actually exists ; it can be nothing 
apart from content. The essence of the thing is only to be 
found in a law according to which its changeable states are con- 
nected with each other. What is meant is not a general law, 
nor yet a merely conceived unity ; it is a real and individual law 
of a series of phenomenal changes.^ Thus in avoiding the ab- 
stractness of the Herbartian realism Lotze seems on the verge 
of abandoning the realistic position altogether. 

But he quickly recovers himself and begins to move definitely 

^Metaphysics, Eng. Tr., Vol. I, p. 12. ^Metaphysics, §§ 1-14. 

3/6., §§ 15-30. *Ib., §§31-6. 



46 THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE 

in the direction of spiritual realism. As against Herbart's 
explanation of identity in the midst of change by the theory of 
unalterable elements in fluctuating external relations, Lotze's 
view is that being is itself but a particular form of becoming. 
But if, on the one hand, to be is to stand in relations, so that 
a change in relations means a change in the thing itself ; and if, 
on the other hand, to be is to change in a definite and orderly 
fashion, it may be concluded that, if there are any existing things 
at all, the mutual relations in which they have their being are 
relations in orderly correspondence with changes in other things. 
But since for becoming the only sufficient reason is an efficient 
cause, it may be concluded that to be, to stand in relations, to 
change in orderly correspondence with changes in other things, 
is to exchange actions.^ 

But "transeunt" action, this interchange of actions between 
independent things, presents difficulties for critical thought, 
and in the face of these difficulties a further transformation 
of the common view is suggested. It is inconceivable that a 
state or event should detach itself from one thing, make its way 
independently to another thing and enter into it.^ "Im- 
manent" action, however, cannot be denied; in experience of 
our own development we have indisputable evidence that in 
one and the same being the reality of one state is the condition 
of the realization of another. May it not be that what appears 
to be transeunt action is in reality immanent, that instead of a 
multiplicity of independent things, all elements are parts of a 
single real Being? In view of the contradiction involved in 
holding that independent beings can be influenced by, and thus 
dependent upon, each other, this transition from pluralism to 
monism is set forth as the only rational possibility for our 
thought. All individual beings are included in an Absolute 
Being, and only thus are they able to act upon each other.^ 
Now these individual things, it will be remembered, were found 
to be in continuous becoming, and yet to preserve their unity 
and identity throughout the whole process. But in experience 
we find but one being, ''the spiritual subject, which exercises 
the wonderful function not merely of distinguishing sensations^ 
ideas, f eeHngs from itself, but at the same time of knowing them 

1 Metaphysics, §§ 40-1, 44-5. 2 lb., §§ 55-6. ^ 75., §§ 68-71, 81. 



DUALISM AND ATTEMPTED METAPHYSICS 47 

as its own, as its states, and which by means of its own unity 
connects the series of successive events in the compass of 
memory." Hence ''if there are to be things with the properties 
we demand of things, they must be more than things. . . . 
They can only be unities if they oppose themselves, as such, to 
the multiphcity of their states.'' Two points are essential, 
*' one, the existence of spiritual beings like ourselves . . . feeling 
their states and opposing themselves to those states as the unity 
that feels, . . . the other, the unity of that Being in which 
these subjects in turn have the ground of their existence, the 
source of their pecuhar nature, and which is the true activity 
at work in them." Any world of things over and above this it 
is not necessary to assume.^ Ultimately this one Being is in- 
terpreted, on the basis of the analogy of the human spirit, as 
the personal God who constantly creates the mechanical pro- 
cesses of Nature for the realization of his purposes. ^ 

Lotze's philosophy has gained many friends, but more, one 
suspects, for the spiritually satisfactory character of the results 
at which he supposed himself to have arrived than for the really 
conclusive character of the processes of his thought. He con- 
ceded too much to Kant ever to be able to make much progress 
in metaphysics. Space is regarded as purely subjective, a per- 
ceived relation of which the cause is a changeable "intelligible" 
— but unknowable — relation existing between realities.^ 
Events which occur in the non-spatial real world cause sensa- 
tions which we construct into the purely subjective and there- 
fore unreal spatial world, which is the only world directly acces- 
sible to us.^ The problem then is, how to learn the nature of 
the real world, from which we are shut off by spatial phenomena. 
Time, it must be admitted, is treated with more respect ; while 
the idea of the totality of empty time is regarded as only a 
subjective form of apprehension, there is a real succession in- 
volved in the operation which is of the very essence of reality.^ 
But "the completely human subjectivity of all our knowledge" 
is asserted as unavoidable, in view of the fact that no mind 
which does not include all reality within itself can ever gain " a 

1/6., §§96-7. 

2 /&., §§ 229, 230. Cf. Outlines of the Philosophy of Religion, Ch. 4. 

^Metaphysics, §§ 114, 116. * lb., § 217. Ub., § 156. 



48 THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE 

view of the objects of its knowledge as they would seem if it 
did not see them." Our only refuge is the confidence of Reason 
in itself, or the belief that the all-inclusive Reality '^has given 
our spirit only such necessities of thought as harmonize with the 
world." ^ Thus, like many another before him, Lotze has 
recourse to rationalistic dogmatism to avoid the agnosticism 
logically involved in epistemological dualism; only, in this 
case what is claimed is not that we know reality as it is, but only, 
in effect, that we do not know that what we have is not knowl- 
edge. Although we can never know that we have knowledge 
of an independent reality which we never directly experience, 
we can nevertheless trust — for this is what Lotze seems to 
mean — that what we have, and call our "knowledge," is either 
knowledge or a satisfactory substitute for it. The fundamental 
agnosticism of Lotze's position becomes evident when we 
examine the way he interprets the nature of things and of the 
World-Ground by falling back upon analogy. Assuming that 
we -have knowledge of ourselves as spirit, he claims that we 
cannot know what reality is, unless we interpret it as essentially 
spirit. What this means, evidently, is that we are offered as 
alternatives spiritualism and agnosticism, the choice between 
them being not rationally determined, but left arbitrary. But 
if we must choose between spiritualism and agnosticism, and 
we can not know which we must choose in order to have the truth, 
we cannot know, manifestly, what reahty is. To leave as ulti- 
mate alternatives agnosticism and any other position whatso- 
ever is to give the victory to agnosticism. 

But the weakness of Lotze's argument at this crucial point 
is but symptomatic of further disorders in his philosophical 
system. Indeed one finds that the transitions of thought upon 
which his argument chiefly depends are by no means rationally 
necessary. Let us begin with his criticism of Herbart's view of 
independent Reals. This he condemns as self -contradictory, 
on the ground that independence means absence of all relations, 
whereas Herbart, as he proceeds, has to speak of the Reals as 
related in some ways to each other. But what Herbart means 
by independence was surely not the absence of all relations, 
but simply the lack of dependence for existence upon anything 

^ Metaphysics, § 94. 



DUALISM AND ATTEMPTED METAPHYSICS 49 

else. Lotze's criticism is valid only on the assumption that for 
anything to be in any relation is for that thing to depend upon 
that relation for its own essential nature ; or, in other words, 
that for anything to be in any relation is always for that relation 
to be in it. This doctrine of the necessary internality of re- 
lations, like the closely related proposition upon which so much 
is made to hinge, viz. : ''To be is to stand in relations," Lotze 
himself assumes upon no other basis, apparently, than the mere 
fact that, if there are more things than one, all things must 
stand in some relation to each other. Where existence is plural, 
to be manifestly involves standing in relations; but this does 
not mean that ''standing in relations" is an adequate definition 
of being. Furthermore, while what a thing is sometimes does 
depend to some extent upon some particular relation in which 
it stands, there are cases where it does not so depend. Whether 
it does or not is determined by the practical purpose back of 
the question. If the relation makes a difference in the object 
for our purposes, it is, for us, a relation internal to the object; 
if it makes no difference, it is external. Apart from some special 
purpose for which it makes a difference, a thing's relations to 
other things, other than its relation as the effect of a cause, are 
incidental, not essential; external, not internal. This con- 
sideration undermines that particular argument for metaphysical 
idealism which rests upon combining with the doctrine that 
to he is identical in meaning with to stand in relations, the relic 
of Kantian subjectivism, "Relations are the work of thought." 

A similar criticism may be made against the view that no 
knowable reality except spirit exists, because we know no other 
reality which can remain identical in the midst of changing 
states. Whether or not what remains, after some quality has 
been changed, is to be regarded as the same thing as existed 
before the change, depends upon the purpose in relation to 
which the question is considered. We cannot conclude, there- 
fore, from the presupposition of identity in the midst of change, 
that the reality is spiritual, but onl}^ that it is being considered 
by some conscious being with reference to some purpose. 

Again, it is not invariably true that to stand in relations is to 
exchange actions. There are other relations between things 
besides the causal relation and such relations as are established 



50 THE PROBLEM OP KNOWLEDGE 

by thinking the two things together. For example, to cite 
an extreme instance, it surely cannot be maintained that to 
stand in the relation of non-interaction is to exchange actions. 

Moreover, the ingenious dialectic by means of which a numer- 
ical ontological monism is supposed to be established through 
a synthesis of the empirical actuality of interaction with its 
theoretical inconceivability, also fails to convince. According 
to Lotze's own principle, we have not, in metaphysics, to ask 
why there should be a world at all, or how reality can be what 
it is ; we have to take it as it is, to find out what it is.^ There 
is mystery in all ultimate existence, in all real productivity, all 
action, as well as in interaction. We should no more argue that 
interaction is impossible, because mysterious, than that there 
is no real becoming, because real becoming is an ultimate mys- 
tery. But with the disappearance of any contradiction of the 
ultimate reality of interaction, the synthesis of the two anti- 
thetical propositions, viz. Lotze's numerical monism, also falls 
to the ground — at least so far as this argument is concerned. 

We can scarcely avoid the conclusion, therefore, that Lotze 
has not succeeded in his attempt to develop a positive meta- 
physic on the basis of a dualistic epistemology. At practically 
every crucial point his argument is fallacious, or at least incon- 
clusive. 

G. T. Ladd, to whose conception of epistemology we have 
already referred,^ is a disciple of Lotze whose Lotzianism is 
tinged with influences from the modified Scottish philosophy 
of Noah Porter. Consequently, while much of our criticism 
of Lotze would apply to the doctrines of Ladd, certain features 
of the latter philosopher's discussion of the problem of knowl- 
edge invite special attention. He is very insistent that cogni- 
tion always transcends experience.^ But his acceptance of the 
Kantian criticism leaves this assertion of ontological validity 
little more than a dogmatic appeal to ''consciousness," after 
the manner of Reid. This element in his thought appears in 
the following quotations: "Experience is . . . truly ontologi- 
cal. To tell how such experience is possible, this was the prob- 
lem of the Critique of Pure Reason. But because its answer 

1 Cf. F. C. S. Schiller, "Lotze's Monism," in Humanism, p. 66. 

» Ch. I, supra. » The Philosophy of Knowledge, pp. 325, 332, 341, etc. 



DUALISM AND ATTEMPTED METAPHYSICS 51 

laid all the emphasis on the analysis of the subject, the knower, 
and did not share the undying confidence of men that the object, 
that which is known, belongs in all its complicated structure 
to the world of reality, this Critique failed to satisfy the demands 
of consciousness. '\ ''The cognition of the world of things by 
the human mind actually takes place with the passionate and 
determined assumption of a right to know what things really 
are. The admission of this right extends and validates our 
system of concepts relating to things. It is, therefore, an 
assumption of the highest epistemological value. We shall return 
to it again." ^ But merely to assert the fact of ontological 
knowledge on the basis of the right to know, and in spite of a 
critical view which would naturally lead to ontological agnosti- 
cism, without showing how such knowledge is possible, is dogma- 
tism. 

A. Seth Pringle-Pattison is perhaps most widely known for 
his revolt from the Hegelian absolutism in the interests of moral 
personality in God and man. Each self, he is concerned to 
maintain, ''resists invasion"; it is "a unique existence, which 
is perfectly impervious."^ But this transition from monism 
to plurahsm, while not necessitating the giving up of meta- 
physical idealism, made it necessary to maintain, from the 
standpoint of the individual subject, an epistemological realism. 
He maintains that the metaphysical dualism of mind and matter 
may be avoided by developing in its stead the epistemological 
dualism of the world of real things and the individual's world 
of consciousness. The special interest attaching to his thought 
in the present connection, then, lies in three things : the offer 
of epistemological dualism as a substitute for metaphysical 
dualism; the absoluteness of that epistemological dualism; 
and finally, the dogmatic claim to know reality, notwithstand- 
ing the absolute dualism of his theory of knowledge.^ 

There are indeed two worlds, says Pringle-Pattison, but 
they are not mind and matter, respectively; the one is the 
world of consciousness; the other the world of independently 

1 A Theory of Reality, p. 8 ; The Philosophy of Knowledge, p. 227. The italics, 
except in the word "right," are mine. 

^ Hegelianism and Personality, 1887, p. 216; 2d ed., 1893, p. 227. 

3 Cf. A. H. Jones, "Professor Pringle-Pattison' s Epistemological Realism," 
Philosophical Review, XX, 1911, pp. 405-21. 



52 THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE 

real things, of " epistemological things-in-themselves." The 
two worlds are mutually exclusive. The mind is never in 
immediate relation to things. All objects, from those which 
are in immediate contact with the organism to the remotest 
star, are completely and inexorably outside the individual's 
world of consciousness.^ It is maintained, however, that the 
world of real things is known to thought; objects and subjects 
are completely sundered in experience, but they are related to 
each other as members of one w^orld, metaphysically speaking,^ 
and '' knowledge points beyond itself to a reahty whose repre- 
sentation or symbol it is." ^ 

But the same old question returns. If we never have any 
direct experience of the real world, how do we know what it is, 
or even that it is? Pringle-Pattison holds that while we can 
prove neither the one nor the other directly, because we can 
never get behind our own knowledge,^ there is nevertheless an 
indirect proof to be found in the instinctive belief of all mankind 
and the failure of non-reahstic theories to avoid practical ab- 
surdity.^ It may be remarked, however, that the instinctive 
realistic belief of mankind is not in epistemological dualism, but 
in a reahstic epistemological monism. Moreover, the failure 
of idealism does not mean the establishment of dualistic reahsm, 
unless this can be shown to be the only other possible theory 
— which, however, is not the case. Nor is dualistic reaUsm, with 
the agnosticism logically involved, desirable, if any essentially 
monistic realism can be found to admit of adequate rational 
defence. 

C. A. Strong has given us a detailed exposition of epistemo- 
logical dualism and critical realism, in combination with ideal- 
ism, or panpsychism, in metaphysics. The position as a whole 
is supported by some new arguments, a special feature of the 
discussion being the attention given to the problems set by 
physiological psychology. Strong acknowledges indebtedness 
to William James and D. S. Miller in arriving at the conviction 
that cognition is nothing but having a feeHng which so resem- 

1 Philosophical Review, I, 1892, pp. 514-16. 

2/6., I, 1892, pp. 145, 513; III, 1894, p. 61. ' 76., I, 1892, p. 504. 

* lb., Ill, 1894, p. 59. Cf. Hegelianism and Personality, pp. 84-5 ; 2d ed., 
p. 90. 

6 Philosophical Review, I, pp. 507, 511-12. 



DUALISM AND ATTEMPTED METAPHYSICS 53 

bles reality that we are enabled to operate upon it. In develop- 
ing further his theory of perception and of cognition in general, 
Strong seems to have found a clew in the nature of memory, 
where the represented object, like the representing image, is 
psychical. He adopts as his hypothesis the view that the reahty 
to which thought refers is not something different in nature 
from thought and more real than it, but simply other experience 
than that which constitutes the reality of thought.^ It then 
becomes his task to work out the details of this theory in the 
hght of scientific knowledge, and to defend it against objec- 
tions and rival interpretations. 

There is, he claims, a twofold existence of the object ; the 
object of which I am immediately conscious cannot be the 
object which acts on my senses and calls forth the perceptional 
brain-event ; it is a modification of my own consciousness, and 
at best a mental duplicate of the stimulus.^ The real object 
produces an image in the brain, an image which, abstracted 
from our consciousness, is projected into space as the physical 
object. The physical order, as made up of projected images, is 
symbolic of a real order, of which our sensations are effects. 
The real object is known, therefore, substitutionally, through 
the medium of its symbol, the physical object or projected 
image.^ This physical object, as a projected image, a modifi- 
cation of consciousness, while an existence distinct from the 
object of which we are immediately conscious, is still an object 
in the same world ; the real world is itself psychical. It is made 
up of minds and their actual and possible experiences.* 

Strong tries to minimize the dualistic, and, therefore, logically 
agnostic features of his epistemology, by insisting that it is 
to be distinguished from the representative theory of knowledge, 
which holds that the thing known primarily in sense-perception 
is the image, the real object being known only by inference and 

1 " A Naturalistic Theory of the Reference of Thought to Reality," Journal of 
Philosophy, etc., Vol. I, 1904, pp. 253-4, 259-60; Why the Mind has a Body, 
1903, pp. 221-2. 

2 Why the Mind, etc., pp. 172, 178. 

3 Why the Mind, etc., pp. 195, 251; " Substitutionalism " in Essays . . . in 
Honor of Wm. James, 1908, pp. 170, etc. ; Journal of Philosophy, etc., IX, 1912, 
pp. 598-9. Cf. D. Drake, Journal of Philosophy, etc., VIII, 1911, pp. 365 ff. ; 
IX, 1912, pp. 149 ff. ; Mind, N.S., XXIV, 1915, pp. 29-36. 

* Why the Mind, etc., pp. 228-9 ; Journal of Philosophy, IX, p. 533. 



54 THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE 

representation. His own view is that the image is not primarily 
the object of knowledge at all, but its medium, or vehicle ; the 
object is known directly, although not immediately.^ But, 
when we get back of these verbal distinctions, we find that what 
the theory amounts to is that the real object, which is psychical, 
produces a cerebral image, which, however dissimilar to the 
real object, still in some sense represents it. This image, how- 
ever, is projected, so that ''the image is taken as being where 
it is not and what it is not." ^ That is, what we know directly 
and immediately is the projected (and, therefore, changed) 
cerebral image, which we call the physical object ; and this is 
called knowing — directly but mediately and symbolically — 
the real psychical object which produced the cerebral image. 
But, we would remark, to project a representative image — 
which is actually but to treat it as if it had been projected — 
does not take away its representative character, although it 
may make it a more useful representative. Whether improved 
or not from the practical point of view, theoretically — accord- 
ing to the logic of Strong's theory — it leaves our fancied knowl- 
edge doubly removed from direct cognition of the real object. 
What we know directl}'- is a distorted product of the object, 
nothing more. Substitutionalism does not offer us genuine 
knowledge, but a substitute for it, upon which the trade-mark 
of knowledge has been stamped. We would agree with Strong 
that what we have and use deserves to be called knowledge; 
but that is because what we have does not fall under his de- 
scriptive formula. What he describes would not be knowledge. 
But even if Strong were to concede that on his view what 
we ordinarily call knowledge is simply a practical makeshift, 
might he not be able at least to maintain that the genuine 
knowledge of reality is that contained in his metaphysical doc- 
trine of things-in-themselves other than human and animal 
minds, but themselves also psychical in nature ? ^ He offers 
three ''proofs" of his doctrine, the cosmological, the physio- 
logical, and the evolutionary. The cosmological is to the effect 

^ Essays . . . in Honor of Wm. James, pp. 171-2 ; Journal of Philosophy, 
IX, p. 540. 

* Journal of Philosophy, IX, p. 599. 

' Cf. D. Drake, The Problem of Things-in-Themselves, 1911. 



DUALISM AND ATTEMPTED METAPHYSICS 55 

that things-in-themselves must be assumed in order to fill in 
the gaps between individual minds, and to give coherence and 
intelligibility to our conception of the universe.^ The '^ physio- 
logical proof" is to the effect that since our perceptions are 
phj^siologically conditioned, we are able to triangulate, as it 
were, to things-in-themselves as their causes.^ Now we are 
not concerned to attack the view that there are things-in-them- 
selves; but if we assume that, as Strong teaches, no human 
being ever has had or can have immediate experience of these 
realities which can exist independently of their being humanly 
experienced, the above arguments for such independent things 
are by no means conclusive. It might be that the whole con- 
tent of experience is produced, as Leibniz maintained, as a 
result of the inner constitution of the individual. 

The '^ evolutionary proof" is used to support the view that 
these things-in-themselves are psychical. The older argument 
for this doctrine has been that since consciousness is the only 
reality of which we have any immediate knowledge, and there- 
fore our only sample of what reality is like, we cannot have 
even a conception of any reality which is not psychical.^ This, 
of course, is at best simply an alternative to agnosticism, and 
so not a proof. The evolutionary argument, which is advanced 
as '^absolutely conclusive," is that things-in-themselves must 
be mental in their nature, because individual minds arise out 
of them by evolution.^ But, in the first place, this argument 
rests upon the presupposition of the existence of things-in- 
themselves, which presupposition we found to be inconclu- 
sively established, provided we assume the validity of Strong's 
contention that we can have no immediate knowledge of any 
reality not dependent upon our own consciousness. More- 
over, if we hold to creative evolution, the '^ evolutionary proof" 
loses all force from any point of view; individual minds may 
be thought of as having arisen, not as new variations of pre- 
viously existing reality, through mere rearrangement of ele- 
ments, but as new variations from it. We conclude, then, that 
Strong's presuppositions would compel him to believe that our 

1 Why the Mind, etc., pp. 252, 259. « 75.^ p. 264. ' /&., p. 294. 

4 /&., pp. 268, 292. Cf. W. K. Clifford, "On the Nature of Things in Them- 
selves," Humboldt Library of Science, No. 145, p. 35. 



56 THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE 

ordinary knowledge is not genuine, and that his own panpsy- 
chism is simply an unproved speculation. 

A. O. Lovejoy's most important contributions to epistemology 
have been his criticisms of the absolute epistemological monism 
and realism of the neo-realists. His own position, however, 
is epistemological dualism and metaphysical temporalistic 
idealism. Finding it easy, in opposition to what he regards as 
the neo-realistic view, to show that knowledge is sometimes 
mediate, he goes on to state that since there can be mediate 
knowledge, there is no reason why knowledge should not al- 
ways be mediate. He feels free, therefore, to hold that the 
existence and some of the attributes of things can be known, 
although always only mediately, since the perceived object 
and the real object are always numerically different, although 
they may be quahtatively identical in part.^ What is over- 
looked here is the possibility that it might be just because there 
is such a thing as immediate knowledge, that mediate knowledge 
becomes possible at all. Moreover, he does not sufficiently 
canvass the possibilities in the way of a less extreme realistic 
epistemological monism than that of the neo-realists. His 
critical arguments, which are largety valid as against the abso- 
lute epistemological monism of the new realists, do not neces- 
sarily apply to that critical realistic epistemological monism 
which we shall defend in a later chapter,^ and which would 
maintain that the experienced object and the independently 
existing thing may be numerically identical, even if to some 
extent qualitatively different.^ 

1 Journal of Philosophy, etc., X, 1913, pp. 568-9, etc. 

2 See Ch. XIV, infra. 

3 Lovejoy gives passing notice to the intermediate views of Schuppe and 
Wolf, and he may be right enough in hinting that these theories perhaps amount 
to no more than "a weak and untenable compromise." ("On the Existence of 
Ideas," The Johns Hopkins University Circular, 1914, No. 3, pp. 49-52.) But 
it does not follow that the same must be true of all possible theories of knowl- 
edge between absolute epistemological dualism and a realistic epistemological 
monism so absolute as to be debarred from making any distinction between 
appearance and reality. 



CHAPTER IV 
Dualism and Attempted Metaphysics {Concluded) 

We turn now to some epistemological dualists who, like 
those just considered, claim to be able to arrive at some posi- 
tive knowledge of reality which is not dependent upon human 
experience, but who, unlike them, exhibit, when taken either 
singly or in groups, a tendency away from idealism, metaphysi- 
cal as well as epistemological, and in the general direction of a 
non-idealistic metaphysics. We shall be interested to learn 
whether they are able, any more successfully than those just 
examined, to overcome the apparently agnostic implications 
of absolute epistemological dualism. 

In post-Kantian philosophy one of the most conspicuous 
examples of this development is to be found in the philosophies 
of Schopenhauer and von Hartmann. But, as the philosopher 
who, perhaps next to Kant, most influenced Schopenhauer, and 
who himself illustrates, in his relation to Fichte, the movement 
from subjectivism to objectivism, we shall briefly refer to 
Schelling. In reaction from his early adherence to the doctrines 
of Fichte, Schelling deliberately undertook to ''break through" 
this closed system of subjective idealism ''into the free open 
field of objective science," with its realistic acceptance of the 
independent existence of the real world. ^ The result was the 
working out of his philosophy of nature, in which nature is viewed 
as creative, and the subjective as being added to the objective. 
Later, indeed, he worked out a transcendental philosophy, 
in which spirit is the creative factor, and the objective is repre- 
sented as being added to the subjective ; but this again was 
taken up into the philosophy of identity, according to which 
objective and subjective, nature and spirit, the real and the 
ideal, are fundamentally the same. The Absolute appears as 

1 See Kuno Fischer, Geschichte der neueren Philosophie, Vol. VII, 1899, pp. 
311 f. 

57 



58 THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE 

nature and spirit, but in itself it is neither the one nor the other, 
but the higher Unity, comprehending both. 

Schopenhauer's philosophy may be viewed as a further separa- 
tion of the idealistic and realistic elements of the Kantian dual- 
ism, counteracted by a more or less dogmatic assertion of iden- 
tity, after the manner of Schelling. If we were to take his 
doctrine of 'Hhe world as idea" alone, Schopenhauer would have 
to be classed as an epistemological monist and idealist ; taking 
his doctrine of *Hhe world as will" alone, we should have to call 
him an epistemological monist and realist; but, both sides of 
his thought being taken together, his doctrine of 'Hhe world as 
will and idea" brings him fairly within epistemological dualism 
and realism. His emphasis upon the idealistic element, how- 
ever, is very pronounced. The whole spatial, temporal, caus- 
ally connected world, of which the individual has experience, 
is interpreted as nothing more than that individual's idea; it 
is ''conditioned through the subject and exists only for the sub- 
ject." ^ This being the case, theoretical egoism, or solipsism, 
never can be refuted. But, on the other hand, it never can be 
proved; and on this ground Schopenhauer decides to ignore 
this theoretical possibility .^ The thing-in-itself, however, from 
the point of view of rational knowledge, is unknowable ; hidden 
under the triple veil of space, time, and causality, it never could 
be known if the investigator were nothing more than the pure 
knowing subject. But the investigator is himself rooted in the 
world. His body is given as idea, an object among the objects 
of the phenomenal world ; and yet it is also given in an entirely 
different way, viz. by direct apprehension, as will. The act of 
will and the movement of the body are one and the same, given 
in two entirelj^ different ways — the former through, or rather 
in, the most immediate inner consciousness of each of us ; the 
latter, in perception, for the understanding. We each of us 
know one thing-in-itself, viz. our own self; and we know it 
as will.^ 

This, then, is taken as the key to the metaphysical problem. 
Since nothing is conceivable that is not will or idea, and since 

1 The World as Will and Idea, Eng. Tr., Vol. I, pp. 3 f. Cf. Introd., pp. 
xxv-xxvi. 

2 76., pp. 135-6. 2 lb., pp. 129-30, 142, 145. 



DUALISM AND ATTEMPTED METAPHYSICS 59 

we can find nowhere any other kind of reaHty besides will, we 
may judge of all phenomenal objects, and of the phenomenal 
world as a whole, after the analogy of our own bodies, con- 
cluding that the inner nature of every physical thing is the 
same as that in ourselves which we call will. In its inmost 
nature the kernel of every particular thing, and also of the 
Whole, is will. It is not meant that in all things this will, or 
striving, is consciously directed, as it is in man ; Schopenhauer 
simply names the genus after that one species which is directly 
and immediately known. The world as it is in itself is will ; 
as it appears in perception it is idea.^ 

In working out the details of this identity-philosophy, 
Schopenhauer's thought runs into what looks like flat self- 
contradiction. On the one hand it is claimed that matter is 
simply a human idea, and on the other that thought is a mere 
product of matter. But criticisms more fundamental still are 
to be made against the system. In the first place, is Schopen- 
hauer, as a radical Kantian, justified in regarding even will as 
anything more than phenomenon? In his later thought he 
became conscious of this difficulty. He insists that the knowl- 
edge each of us has of his own willing is neither perception 
nor an empty concept, but he has to admit that even in- 
ward experience does not give us adequate knowledge of the 
thing-in-itself. The act of will is only the closest and most 
distinct manifestation of reality; in it the thing-in-itself ap- 
pears in the very thinnest of veils — free from space and caus- 
ality, but still not quite divested of time. In the end, Scho- 
penhauer makes the agnostic confession: "The question what 
that will ultimately and absolutely is in itself . . . can never 
be answered, because becoming known is itself the contradic- 
tory of being in itself, and everything that is known is, as such, 
only phenomenal." ^ Here at length he becomes consistent, 
and lapses into the Kantian agnostic dualism. 

But while he is at this point at length consistent — or at 
least as consistent as explicit agnosticism easily can be — he is 
not, we would maintain, correct. As we have seen, epistemo- 
logical dualism is founded on confusion and defended by fallacy. 
It has not been shown to be necessary; and, in a later con- 

1 16., pp. 136. 143. 2 76., Vol. II, pp. 405-8. 



60 THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE 

nection ^ we shall set forth an opposite hypothesis, according 
to which it would be incorrect to say that we can have no gen- 
uine knowledge of independent realities, things-in-themselves, 
if you please, and that on the basis of perception and reflection. 
From this our own point of view we would say that Schopen- 
hauer's assertion, that we have direct knowledge of ourselves 
as will, is in itself correct, although for him inconsistent. But 
when he goes on to assert, ex analogia hominis, and in order to 
escape from agnosticism, that all reality is will, he simply lapses 
into dogmatism. ' From his own presuppositions, strictly inter- 
preted, not even the human individual, much less every real 
thing, could be said to be will, any more than it could be said 
to be anything else. Not in the philosophy of Schopenhauer, 
at least, do we find epistemological dualism legitimately set 
free from agnosticism. 

Among those deeply influenced by Schopenhauer, some have 
gone in the direction of absolute idealism, as, for example, F. 
Paulsen and P. Deussen. These thinkers are monistic panpsy- 
chists; but E. von Hartmann goes in the opposite direction 
and develops a philosophy of the ''Unconscious." He calls 
his theory of knowledge ''transcendental realism." It is what 
we have called absolute epistemological dualism, or epistemo- 
logical dualism and critical realism, and is combined with a 
rather highly developed system of metaphysics. This theory 
of knowledge he regards as the only alternative to naive real- 
ism on the one side and subjective idealism on the other. Naive 
realism is to be rejected, he holds, for its failure to see that 
everything we can reach with our thoughts can always be only 
our own thoughts, never the reality lying behind them. Sub- 
jective idealism he rejects for the error of denying the existence 
of that which is beyond the limit of thinking, for no other reason 
than that it is inaccessible to thought. ^ The only other pos- 
sibilities being thus eliminated, transcendental or dualistic 
epistemological realism is regarded as established. 

Von Hartmann, however, does not think it necessary to 
remain agnostic, even on the basis of this dualistic epistemology. 
Even at the expense of contradicting the idealistic side of Kant's 

1 See Ch. XIV, infra. 

* The Philosophy of the Unconscious, Eng. Tr., Vol. Ill, p. 198. 



DUALISM AND ATTEMPTED METAPHYSICS 61 

doctrine, he sets himself to develop the realistic side of Kan- 
tianism, to gain positive knowledge of things-in-themselves.^ 
In general, this is accomplished by assuming, in agreement 
with Schelling, 'Hhe^ homogeneity of thought and its trans- 
cendent-objective object," as the only supposition upon which 
knowledge is conceivable.^ To account for this we must 
assume the identity of Thought and Being. The Beyond of con- 
scious thinldng must be unconscious thinking, for consciousness 
thinks its own conscious thought, and yet supposes something 
else ; hence, in so far as thought is true, reality can differ from 
what is consciously thought only in being unconscious.^ 

But that we must avoid dogmatism in our transition from 
consciousness to the Beyond, von Hartmann himself urges. 
We must employ, he tells us, ''the successive inductive ascent 
from experience." ^ The bridge whereby we may pass induc- 
tively from the world immanent within our own consciousness 
to the transcendent is found in the fact that in sense-experience 
we are affected by something beyond us; it is the bridge of 
transcendent causality. There is a transcendent cause of our 
sensations, and this cause is represented in our consciousness 
by the ''transcendental object." ^ Causality is the only rela- 
tion between the immanent and the transcendent.^ In itself, 
to be sure, it establishes only the existence of things-in-them- 
selves, and has nothing to say about any similarity between the 
thing-in-itself and object of consciousness.^ But by means of 
this causal bridge the whole realm of the transcendent lies 
open to us.^ From the diversity of objects perceived through 
one sense, we must conclude that there is a 'plurality of things- 
in-themselves. As operative, they must be changeable, and 
thus exist in time. Indeed Kant was wrong in forbidding the 
transcendental use of the categories. With space and time, 
they are the existential forms of what exists, as well as the 
thought-forms of what is thought.^ 

^ Kritische Grundlegung des transcendentalen Realismus, [3d ed. (in Ausge- 
wdhlte Werke, I, 2d ed.), p. 54. 

2 Philosophy of the Unconscious, Vol. Ill, pp. 198-9. 

» 76., pp. 200, 203 ; cf. Kuelpe, Philosophy of the Present in Germany, Eng. 
Tr., p. 190. 

* lb., p. 203 ; cf. Vol. I, pp. 9-13. ^ Kritische Grundlegung, etc., I, pp. 55-7. 

« lb., p. 94. 7 75.^ p. 66. s Jb., p. 94. «• lb., p. 106. 



62 THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE 

Upon this basis von Hartmann proceeds inductively to de- 
velop further his metaphysical theory of the Unconscious. He 
states his doctrine in the following terms : "Being is a product 
of the non-logical and the logical, of Will and Representation. 
Its Hhat' is posited by volition, its 'what' is the ideational 
content of that volition. It is thus not merely homogeneous 
with the Idea, but because it is itself Idea, identical in the 
strictest sense of the term. But the Real is distinguished from 
the Ideal by that which lends reality to the Ideal, by the Will. 
. . . The Unconscious is not the Absolute Subject, but is 
what alone can become Subject, just as it is what alone can 
become Object, simply because there is nothing beside the 
Unconscious." ^ 

That the world per se is the Unconscious, identical with 
the conscious, as far as the latter goes, but going far beyond 
it — this doctrine von Hartmann finds reenforced by such facts 
as those of instinct, the unconscious union of sensations in 
perception, and the unconscious association of ideas and pro- 
duction of feelings and motives. In his ''speculative results,^' 
however, he has gone far beyond the sober method of induc- 
tion which he professed to follow. We see the influence of 
Schelling's identity philosophy, under the guidance of which 
Hegel's Absolute Idea and Schopenhauer's Absolute Will are 
brought together in the Absolute whose two attributes are 
infinite Will and finite Idea. The metaphysics of the Uncon- 
scious is poetical, mythological, and dogmatic, rather than a 
simple unification of results of scientific induction. With 
reference to the use made of the idea of transcendent causality, 
it may be said that this attempt to attain to knowledge of the 
thing-in-itself is itself laudable, but not when associated with a 
thoroughgoing epistemological dualism. If we have some direct 
experience of things, we may indeed use the causal category as a 
bridge from directly known realities to causes operating beyond 
our immediate experience ; but if we never have direct experi- 
ence of independent reality, how can we know that it con- 
tains any causes of our sensations? Von Hartmann's funda- 
mental error would seem to lie in his supposition that a 
dualistic epistemological realism is the only alternative to naive 

» Philosophy of the Unconscious, Vol. Ill, pp. 200-1. 



DUALISM AND ATTEMPTED METAPHYSICS 63 

realism and subjective idealism. It will be our task, as we 
have already intimated, in a later connection ^ to point out 
another alternative. 

Johannes Volkelt acknowledges a debt to Schopenhauer,^ and 
he has evidently been not only interested in the philosophy 
of von Hartmann,^ but also considerably influenced by his 
thought, especially by his problem. His fundamental position 
in epistemology — which branch of philosophy he suggestively 
describes as ''science without presuppositions"^ — is, in the 
sense in which we have used the word, dualistic.^ He virtually 
assumes that our experience, in so far as it is not thought, is 
simply experience of our own conscious states. Confronted, 
then, with the fundamental difficulty of establishing the objec- 
tivity of knowledge in spite of the subjectivity of experience, 
the only scientific method in epistemology, he claims, is simply 
to show up the conscious processes involved in what we call 
our knowledge.^ 

Within the limits indicated Volkelt proceeds with admirably 
critical care, and succeeds not only in avoiding inconsistency 
to a remarkable degree, but also in covering up to a large extent 
the underlying dualism of his point of view. This is accom- 
plished by setting over against the dualism of the immanent 
subjective and the transcendent objective the duality of expe- 
rience and thought. Indeed it would seem that the only dual- 
ism which the philosopher acknowledges, even to himself, at 
first, is this ''dualism" of experience and thought. As against 
the epistemological monists of thought, like Plato, Spinoza, and 
Hegel, and the epistemological monists of pure experience, such 
as Hume, Mill, and Avenarius, Volkelt confesses adherence to 
the innocent enough looking "dualistic" doctrine that all true 
knowledge is the elaboration of pure experience by thought.^ 
But where the duahsm really lies, appears later, when, after 

1 See Ch. XIV, infra. « Arthur Schopenhauer, 1900, Preface, etc. 

» See article in Nord und Sud, July, 1881 ; also Das Unbewusste und der 
Pessimismus. 

* Erfahrung und Denken, 1886, Pt. I, Ch. I ; Die Quellen der menschlichen 
Gewissheit, 1906, p. 4. 

6 Die Quellen, etc., § 2. « Erfahrung und Denken, Pt. I, Ch. II. 

' Die Quellen, etc., pp. 2, 3 ; cf. Erfahrung und Denken, passim. This prob- 
lem we shall have to deal with in our discussion of the morphology of knowledge, 
Ch. XV, infra. 



64 THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE 

the self -certainty of consciousness has been dealt with/ the 
''dramatic crisis of epistemology " occurs with the raising of 
the question ''whether I can exhibit in my consciousness a 
source of certainty which allows me to transcend my conscious- 
ness, not of course actually and truly, but in the way of cer- 
tainty." 2 Experience is subjective, but thought, with its 
logical necessit}^, presumes to deal with the transsubjective. 

Having, then, as our undoubtedly certain knowledge our 
immediate awareness of the subjective, the question has come 
to be whether we have, in the necessity of thought, valid medi- 
ate awareness of the transsubjective.^ A critical examination 
of the content of our necessary thought regarding the subjec- 
tive reveals, as involved in our simplest judgments of fact, 
four minimum propositions, viz. the existence of other conscious- 
nesses,^ the continuous existence of transsubjective entities, 
the rational correlation of transsubjective entities, and the 
numerical oneness of the world of the senses.^ In the case of 
each of these propositions the transsubjective validity of the 
necessity of thought must be recognized, or else we are led 
into affirming what is manifest nonsense. And yet the necessity 
of thought is itself only a subjectively experienced necessity. 
As a form of immediate certainty which reaches out to the 
transsubjective, it may be called faith, and intuition ; but the 
faith is not irrational, and the intuition is not in opposition 
to the logical. Rather is it the way of being immediately 
conscious which characterizes the logical itself. So, then, the 
necessity of thought cannot itself be proved, but must be be- 
lieved. Thought has the character of a demand, a postulate ; 
being itself only an individual conscious event, it comes into 
contact with the transsubjective only by way of demanding 
transsubjective validity for its content. Of the fulfilment of 

1 Die Quellen, etc., §§ 4-6. ^ lb., pp. 19, 23. 

3 Erfahrung und Denken, Pt. II, Ch. I ; Pt. Ill, Ch. II ; Die Quellen, etc., 
§§ 8-10. 

* Cf. Julius Baumann, Anti-Kant, 1905, p. 2, "The inner life of others like 
our own ... is a sure case of the thing-in-itself." 

5 Die Quellen, etc., §§ 12-16 ; cf. Erfahrung und Denken, Pt. Ill, Ch. II, A. 
Cf. also Ueber die Moglichkeit der Metaphysik, 1884, pp. 16, 17, where it is in- 
timated that while the " absolute and dogmatic " type of metaphysics may well 
be regarded as impossible, the same should not be concluded of metaphysics 
Uberhaupt. 



DUALISM AND ATTEMPTED METAPHYSICS 65 

this demand it can never be certain. Thus we have at length 
Volkelt's confession that thought is ''duahstically broken."^ 
His synthesis of subjectivism with transsubjectivism, his union 
of epistemological ideahsm and epistemological reahsm, may 
be regarded as in the end itself only a demand. 

Still, the necessity of thought, with its demand of transsub- 
jective vahdity, exists; and, grounded in mere subjectivity 
as it is, its guidance may be followed, not only in the specula- 
tive sciences, but in metaphysics as well. In the sciences it 
leads to what may be called a transsubjective of the first order, 
in which is included as much of the inexperienceable as is neces- 
sary for making the given intelligible by means of a thorough- 
going causal connection. In metaphysics, however, search- 
ing into the essence of things, even under the guidance of the 
necessity of thought, we are not led to conclusive results ; it 
can ever be science only in the sense of a scientific discussion 
of logical possibilities. At best the hypotheses of metaphysics 
are perhaps well-grounded postulates, carrying us some dis- 
tance on the way to truth, but never, as we know from result- 
ing inconceivabilities, bringing us to the goal.^ Before reach- 
ing the end of metaphysical inquiry w^e are confronted with the 
completely unknown, the superrational and the irrational.^ 

But besides the knowledge of the transsubjective demanded 
in the necessity of thought, there are various forms of non- 
rational or non-logical intuition. Indeed, defining intuition 
as essentially the union of immediacy with transsubjectivity, 
Volkelt here applies the term exclusively to these non-logical 
forms. From this point of view, then, there are three kinds of 
certainty : the self-certainty of consciousness or pure experi- 
ence, which is immediate, but not transsubjective; logical 
certainty, which is transsubjective, but not immediate; and 
intuitive certainty, which is both immediate and transsubjective. 
Five varieties of this strictly intuitive certainty are discussed, 
viz. moral, religious, aesthetic, vitalistic, and naive-realistic, 
claiming immediate transsubjective knowledge of the moral 
law, of union with God, of the harmony of the world, of one's 

^ Die Quellen, etc., pp. 73-6 ; cf. Erfahrung und Denken, Ft. Ill, Ch. Ill ; 
Ft. IV, Ch. III. 

2 Die Quellen, etc., § 22. ^ lb., § 23. 



66 THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE 

own life, and of the independent, external world, respectively.^ 
These intuitive certainties are not to be taken uncritically, 
however. If naive realism were fully right, for example, the 
contents of sense-experience as such would have to he the ex- 
ternal world. 2 Still, human needs call for a broad philosophy, 
which shall draw, not only upon the sciences, but also upon 
these intuitive sources of certainty. The more logical such 
a philosophy of life is, the nearer it is to science ; the more the 
certainty of feeling retires the scientific way of knowing, the 
closer it stands to pure faith. But in any case it is only in its 
formal and negative aspect that philosophy can be regarded as 
scientific.^ 

It would be difficult to imagine a more satisfactory treat- 
ment of the problem of knowledge under the self-imposed limits 
of epistemological dualism than this which it receives from Vol- 
kelt. He admits, in his doctrine of intuitive certainty, the 
epistemological monism and realism of our ordinary conscious- 
ness; and yet, as a critical realist, he recognizes the essential 
dogmatism of this naive point of view. He claims, as a criti- 
cal realist, an irreducible minimum of valid representation of 
the transsubjective, reached through following out the neces- 
sities of thought ; and yet, as an epistemological dualist, he is 
consistent enough to admit that, strictly speaking, we do not, 
even in the necessity of thought, possess transsubjective knowl- 
edge, but simply demand it. Thus it is the very satisfactori- 
ness of Volkelt's discussion that reveals the unsatisfactoriness 
of the dualism of his epistemology — which is thus shown to 
be not ''without presuppositions." N] 

In the course of his discussion Volkelt refers to Hans Corne- 
lius as one who refuses to recognize the necessity of assuming 
transsubjective entities, and who simply refers instead to the 
experientially known law-abiding character of our perceptions, 
with its included meaning that the contents of this law ought 
to be ordered by the concept of this law-abiding character."* 
In a later article, however, Cornelius seems to be fairly upon 
the ground of a dualistic epistemological realism, which 
claims, in spite of its dualism, to be able to overcome the 

1 Die Qudlen, etc., § 24. 2 lb., p. 122. ^ lb., § 25. 

* lb., p. 68, referring to Cornelius : Einleitung in die Philosophie, pp. 257 £f. 



DUALISM AND ATTEMPTED METAPHYSICS 67 

Kantian agnosticism with reference to the thing-in-itself . 
In this article he sets himself the task of solving the prob- 
lem how through the impression, which is apparently in us, 
we can ever know the thing, which is something outside 
of us.^ It is generally supposed by philosophers, he remarks, 
that things-in-themselves are unknowable; but, if they are 
unknowable, why, he asks, do we continue to speak of 
them ? 2 

After defining the thing-in-itself, in distinction from the 
appearance, as the thing which continues to exist while it is 
not perceived,^ he goes on to say : ''The law holds good of the 
thing, even when I do not see it, that if I will consider it under 
these conditions, it will have a certain appearance, and if under 
those conditions, a certain different appearance. This whole 
law is independent of momentary perception, and so dogmatic 
idealism is not correct, for we know that this law is true of the 
object even when I do not perceive it.'' * What the natural 
sciences, physics and chemistry, for example, teach about 
things, is a network of such laws for our perceptions. Every 
physical and chemical property of a thing therefore denotes 
a law for phenomena accessible under definite conditions. 
Since, then, every such law gives us knowledge of the thing- 
in-itself, the assertion that the thing-in-itself is unknowable is a 
mere prejudice.^ 

Now, apart from the dualistic presuppositions, this claim 
to know at least the laws of the appearances of things which 
exist independently of their appearances, may be accepted as 
valid. From our own point of view, even more than this 
can be known of the thing-in-itself. But the question is, 
whether, if all we ever know directly is our own subjective im- 
pressions and constructs, we can ever know that independent 
things exist. Would it not be sufficient to say that the law is 
what is true of the phenomenal object when it comes into 
existence? In spite of our practical conviction that such things 
do exist, and that we can and do know them, the theoretical 
doubt would remain. This is not, of course, a criticism of the 

* "Die Erkenntnis der Dinge an sich," Logos, I, 1910, p. 362. 

» 76., p. 364. 3 lb., p. 366. 

i lb., p. 369 (condensed translation). » 75.^ pp, 369-70. 



68 THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE 

belief of Cornelius, that we have knowledge of the thing-in- 
itself ; it is simply a criticism of his fundamental theory, which 
would make it forever impossible fully to justify that belief. 

Another contemporary German thinker remains to be con- 
sidered here, viz. Oswald Kuelpe, who, in his relation to his 
old master, Wundt, may be regarded as representing the move- 
ment away from idealism in the direction of an essentially non- 
idealistic metaphysical construction. Wundt calls his own 
system ideal-realism, ^ but what he has accomplished does not 
amount to a completely harmonious synthesis of idealistic and 
realistic points of view in epistemology. Rather is it, as even 
his disciple recognizes, a fluctuation between a disguised 
psychological idealism (included by Kuelpe under positivism) 
and the metaphysics of a reality beyond the reach of human 
experience (though not beyond the reach of the rational thought- 
processes of the special sciences) .^ Wundt, however, rejects 
the supposed thing-in-itself, inaccessible to experience and 
thought, as a mere fiction.^ Metaphysics is not onl}^ possible 
but necessary, and must be a synthesis of the special sciences, 
physical and psychological.^ 

Kuelpe is quite ready to follow Wundt in the attempt to 
make philosophy a synthesis of the sciences,^ but he claims that 
one cannot consistently hold to the reality of both immediate 
experience and the transcendent objects of thought. One 
must choose either a positivistic immediate empiricism, in which 
case all metaphysical creation and aspiration are to be con- 
demned as futile, or else a '^neo-rationalism," which would 
regard immediate experience as being itself nothing real, but 
a stepping-stone to reality, as in the empirical sciences.® Kuelpe 
himself chooses the latter alternative, the transcendental 
method,^ which takes non-dependence upon the experiencing 
subject as the mark of objective reality.^ In other words, in 

1 System der Philosophie, 3d ed., 1907, Vol. I, pp. 196-7. Further attention 
will be given to Wundt's system of thought in Ch. VI, infra. 

2 Kuelpe, Philosophy of the Present in Germany, Eng. Tr., pp. 217-19. 

3 System., etc., I, p. 84. 

* Die Kultur der Gegenwart, I, vi, p. 132 ; System, etc., I, p. 9. 

' Philosophy of the Present in Germany, p. 236. 

«/6., pp. 218-19, 235, 248-9. 

' Erkenntnistheorie und Naturwissenschaft, 1910, p. 40. ^ lb., p. 13. 



DUALISM AND ATTEMPTED METAPHYSICS 69 

this ''critical realism of natural science," ^ which takes the 
results of the natural sciences as the pattern of genuine knowl- 
edge,2 the criterion of reality is neither purely rational nor 
purely empirical, but reahty is that which is found by abstract- 
ing from all the subjectivities of pure experience.^ 

It should be noted, however, that the presuppositions of 
Kuelpe's epistemology are more frankly dualistic than Wundt's. 
Experiences as such do not show anything of an external world 
beyond themselves, he says; they are completely shut in to 
themselves.^ But thought can transcend experience and reach 
metaphysical reality, not only by positing the external world as 
the cause of our perception,^ but further by taking the elements 
of sense-experience as representing external corporeal elements. 
This view, that thought has the power of transcending ex- 
perience, he defends, in addition to his reference to the success 
of the natural sciences, negatively, in his claim that Kant did 
not prove the forms of thought to be of purely subjective valid- 
ity.^ But it is not to the physical sciences alone that Kuelpe 
appeals in support of his theory that rational thought, tran- 
scending the immediately given, can discover the independent 
reality of which it is at once the effect and the representation. 
Even psychic reality, he contends, is not immediately given in 
experience, but has to be sought by rational thought behind 
the phenomena of consciousness.^ Finally, the non-idealistic 
character of his metaphysics appears in his refusal to commit 
himself to the doctrine that all reality is to be determined after 
the analog}^ of the mental life ; the psychical, he insists, is no 
better known than the physical.^ 

When we raise the question whether Kuelpe has been suc- 
cessful in passing, without dogmatism, from epistemological 
dualism to knowledge of the thing-in-itself, the answer must 
be negative. We would agree that the procedure of the sciences 
ought to be taken as our best guide into the field of metaphysics, 
and therefore as our best guide to the solution of the problems 
of epistemology ; but those sciences, when left to themselves, 
do not assume that reality is not presented at all in immediate 

1 lb., p. 22. 2 Ih., p. 34. 3 76., p. 20. * lb., p. 21. 

5 76., p. 22. 6 Immanuel Kant, 3d ed., 1912, pp. 77-80. 

7 Philosophy of the Present, etc., pp. 222-35. » lb., p. 235. 



70 THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE 

experience, although they do teach that it is not completely 
presented there. How Kuelpe comes to know that an objec- 
tive reality is represented in consciousness, without having 
ever been presented there, is not made apparent. The real 
problem as to how, assuming epistemological dualism, knowledge 
is possible, is allowed to remain unanswered. 

Bertrand Russell, in his Problems of Philosophy, ^ concedes 
that solipsism cannot be strictly proved to be false, but claims 
that there is not the slightest reason to suppose that it is 
true. Moreover, it is a simpler hypothesis to suppose that 
there are external physical objects to which our perceptions 
and ideas correspond ; and, besides, this is the instinctive belief 
of all mankind. 2 The epistemology suggested here is decidedly 
dualistic. This dualism seems to centre in Russell's doctrine 
of space, influenced as that has been by the non-Euclidean 
geometries. While it is maintained that the time-order which 
events seem to have is the same as the time-order which they 
really have,^ it is contended that we can know nothing of what 
physical space in itself is like, but only that the arrangement of 
objects in perceptual space results from and corresponds — in 
its logical relations — to their relations in extra-experiential 
or physical space.* He is unable to reach the physical object 
and the space of physics except by an inference which leaves 
their nature unknown, and only certain of their logical relations 
discoverable. He acknowledges that through rational thought 
we know only what may be, not what is. Consequently, in 
his philosophy, which is abstractly developed according to the 
methods of the mathematical sciences, while our knowledge 
of what may be, i.e. of what is logically possible, is found 
capable of indefinite extension, our knowledge of what is is 
reduced to an almost insignificant minimum, and even that is 
still dependent upon the appeal to ''instinctive belief." ^ And 

1 Since the publication of this little volume Russell's views have undergone 
an important modification, so that now he is able to work out, with a high 
degree of consistency, an extreme form of realistic epistemological monism, 
which does not lie open to the criticisms mentioned in the present discussion. 
To this later form of Russell's doctrine we shall have to refer in our examina- 
tion of the new realism, Chs. X to XIII, infra. 

» The Problems of Philosophy, pp. 27, 34-5, 37-8. 

3 lb., p. 52. * lb., pp. 49, 50. » 76., pp. 37-8, 230. 



DUALISM AND ATTEMPTED METAPHYSICS 71 

SO we see that Russell, as a result of his approximation to 
epistemological dualism, has a narrow escape from agnosticism, 
if, indeed, he may be said really to have escaped it at all. 

As a result, then, of our investigation of recent attempts 
to construct a positive metaphysical system upon the basis of 
an absolutely dualistic epistemology, we must conclude that 
no such metaphysical system can logically be regarded as 
knowledge, for the reason that its verification by reference to 
immediate experience is impossible. The only metaphysics 
possible for the epistemological dualist is dogmatics. 



2. A CRITIQUE OF IDEALISM 

CHAPTER V 
Mystical and Logical Idealism 

In absolute epistemological dualism, which we have ex- 
amined in the three immediately preceding chapters, there is 
asserted an existential or numerical duality between what is 
perceived and what is independently real. Corresponding to 
the two sides in this absolute dualism, the perceptual, or con- 
scious, and the real, respectively, we have in recent and con- 
temporary philosophy two forms of absolute epistemological 
monism, the one idealistic and the other realistic. The realis- 
tic form would overcome the dualism by cancelling the percep- 
tual or conscious content, holding it to be nothing in addition 
to the independent reality. The idealistic type of epistemo- 
logical monism, at least in its usual forms, would avoid the 
dualism by eliminating the other term, the independent reality, 
holding the real object to be nothing in addition to a perceptual 
or other conscious content, as such. If either form of episte- 
mological monism can with reasonableness be maintained, it 
will prove a solid foundation for the assertion that knowledge 
is possible. 

Of the two forms of absolute epistemological monism, we 
shall first take up for consideration the idealistic. This ideal- 
istic absolute epistemological monism, or ''epistemological 
monism and idealism" as it was designated in the recent report 
of the Committee on Definitions of the American Philosophical 
Association, was defined by that committee as the view that 
''the real object and the perceived object are, at the moment of 
perception, numerically one, and the real object cannot exist 
at other moments independently of any perception." ^ This 
definition needs to be supplemented, however, if it is to cover 

1 Journal of Philosophy, etc., Vol. VIII, 1911, p. 703. 
72 



MYSTICAL AND LOGICAL IDEALISM 73 

the various types of theoretical ideaUsm in their epistemological 
aspect. In some types of ideahsm the reahty is identified 
with the immediate datum of consciousness, considered as a 
part of consciousness ; but in other cases it is identified with a 
predicate, the result of an abstraction from the immediately 
given. We may say, then, that the idealistic form of absolute 
epistemological monism is the doctrine that the real object and 
the percept or an abstract are, at the moment of perception or 
of thought, numerically one, and that the real object is depend- 
ent for its existence in the one case upon perception, and in the 
other case (although the relation is partially obscured) upon 
thought. 

Before examining in detail the principal varieties of ideal- 
ism, it may be well to intimate that we have nothing to say 
against either practical idealism or a certain relative theoretical 
idealism. By practical idealism is meant the view that there 
are ideals which have valid authority over every personal life, 
and which one must therefore assume to be, at least ultimately 
and progressively, realizable. More particularly, it is the 
doctrine that the spiritual or ''ideal" interests are properly 
ends, and other interests ultimately mere means ; that the ideal, 
also, in so far as it gains subjective existence, is a real, efficient 
factor in the changes which take place in the objective world. 
Obviously, if our customary terminology were more accurate, 
this practical idealism alone would bear the name of ideal-ism. ; 
theoretical idealism, the doctrine that reality is essentially 
idea, in some sense of the word, is, strictly speaking, not ideal- 
ism, but idea-ism. But it should be noted, at any rate, that 
idea-ism (theoretical idealism) has gained much of its prestige 
from the ideal-ism with which it is so often confused, and whose 
name it bears.^ 

But we also mentioned a relative theoretical idealism, as 
not to be controverted here. By this designation we mean 
the view that in some cases it happens that certain qualities 
or relations of real objects are produced directly by thought 

^ See, for example, Ladd's Knowledge, Life and Reality, p. 54, where, after 
emphasis upon the reality of ideals as "spiritual facts and forces," the remark is 
added that idealism has always been "the 'school' which has commanded the 
adherence of the choicest spirits, as well as the most thoughtful minds." 



74 THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE 

and the underlying purpose. Sometimes a thing becomes 
what the purpose and thought of an individual or of a group 
take it to be, even although it does not possess the quality or 
relation in question apart from the thought and purpose of the 
said individual or group. An obvious instance is the giving 
of a name for the first time. The same is also true of valua- 
tion in some cases ; an object often comes to have a value which 
is fictitious without being unreal ; it depends for its existence 
upon the thought which thinks it, and yet, at the same time, 
relatively, to the individual or the group concerned, it is a real 
value of the object. The view which recognizes both the reality 
of such qualities and relations, and their status as immediately 
dependent upon purpose and thought, might justly enough be 
called a relative theoretical idealism; and whatever might 
prove to be the case with other varieties of theoretical idealism, 
this at least could be defended as undogmatic and true. It so 
happens, however, that the name " idealism '' is not commonly 
applied to this doctrine. 

Leaving out of consideration, then, what we have called 
practical idealism and relative idealism, let us turn to philo- 
sophical or theoretical idealism, in the common acceptation 
of the term, and view its varieties in relation to the problem of 
acquaintance with reality. In undertaking a classification 
of the various ideaUstic theories the most natural procedure 
would probably be to divide them according to their deriva- 
tion into (1) those based upon the subject-matter of judgments 
in its experienced immediacy as it enters into the conscious- 
ness of the individual, and (2) those based upon the predicate, 
the mediating element. The idealism of immediacy, however, 
includes two main forms, viz. mystical and psychological 
idealism, both of which seem to be based upon the suggestion 
that since we learn what objects — in particular, physical 
objects — are through immediate mystical or sense-experience, 
this their appearance in immediate experience constitutes the 
whole of their reality. The idealism whose appeal is to the 
predicate rather than to the subject-matter of the judgment, 
the idealism of the (logical) idea, and thus the form which has 
a peculiar claim to be regarded as idealism proper, may be 
designated logical idealism. It seems to rest upon the sugges- 



MYSTICAL AND LOGICAL IDEALISM 75 

tion that since we learn what objects are through ideas, predi- 
cates, things themselves must be ideas, or combinations of 
ideas. We propose, then, in entering upon our critique of ideal- 
ism, to begin by examining these three elemental types, which, 
to name them in the chronological order of their becoming 
historically important, are mystical idealism, logical idealism, 
and psychological idealism, respectively. 

Mystical Idealism 

Mystical idealism is an interpretation of the physical world 
with its contained objects, under the influence of suggestions 
arising from mystical experience, as being maya, mere decep- 
tive appearance, mere idea in "mortal mind." Since, in the 
more extreme phases of the mystical state, through rapt con- 
centration of soul upon the religious Object, the Absolute One, 
distinct consciousness of the physical environment lapses, this 
disappearance of the material world is interpreted by the mystic 
as meaning the unreality of matter, especially since the mystical 
state is felt to have a value far transcending that of ordinary 
consciousness.^ This seems the most natural explanation of 
the religious philosophy of Yajnavalkhya and the other sages 
of the Hindu Upanishads. One does not forget, indeed, that 
Deussen seems to hold that Hindu mysticism was a practical 
consequence of the speculative metaphysics of the sages, rather 
than the source from which they received their original sugges- 
tions and the norm with reference to which they controlled 
their speculations,^ but his position is virtually assumed 
rather than proved. He refers to the comparative lateness 
both of the Yoga Upanishad, containing the practical instruc- 
tions for cultivating the mystical experience, and of the teach- 
ing concerning turiya, the fourth, or mystical state of the soul ; ' 
but this must not be taken as conclusive evidence. Technical 
instruction for reproducing mystical states would not in any 
case be likely to be committed to writing until after the theo- 

^ Cf. Delacroix, Etudes d'histoire et de psychologie du mystidsme, p. 370 ; G. A. 
Coe, "The Sources of the Mystical Revelation," Hibbert Journal, VI, 1908, pp. 
363-5. , 

2 P. Deussen, Philosophy of the Upanishads, Eng. Tr., pp. 342, 383. 

» lb., p. 309. 



76 . THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE 

logical dogmas suggested by that experience had gained con- 
siderable prestige, such as might have come through their 
being put into hterary form, as in the earlier Upanishads.^ And 
as for the lateness of the idea of the fourth state (turiya), the 
explanation may conceivably be that the mystical state was 
formerly meant to be included in the third state of dreamless 
sleep (prajna), in which, while there is no consciousness in an 
empirical sense, the self is not annihilated, but becomes identi- 
fied with the one supreme Spirit. The fourth state differs 
only in that the unification with the supreme Spirit is realized 
in a consciousness; when the false knowledge of the first two 
states (ordinary consciousness and dreams) and the no knowl- 
edge of the third state vanish, then the fourth state is reached.^ 
What this suggests is that prajna is, or includes, the mystic 
unconsciousness, while turiya is either the mystic consciousness, 
succeeding the condition of trance, or the trance itself, inter- 
preted, in the light of later reflection, as being a sort of super- 
consciousness. In either case the idea of turiya would be merely 
a later supplement to a previously existing doctrine of the mysti- 
cal state. 

But the evidence upon which we mainly rely for our con- 
viction that the idealistic interpretation of the physical world 
in the philosophy of the Upanishads was originally based, at 

1 It may be, as some scholars (e.g. E. W. Hopkins, H. Oldenberg, Die Lehre 
der Upanishaden und die Anfdnge des Buddhismus, 1915, pp. 89, 90) assert, that 
the idealistic maya doctrine is not clearly discoverable in the very oldest of the 
Upanishads. This would only bring the date of the beginning of what we take 
to be the mystical idealism of these writings down closer to the time of the 
undisputed existence of mystical practice. But even if we should agree with 
these scholars in contradistinction from Deussen with reference to the explicit 
teaching of the oldest Upanishads, we could still point out on the one hand that 
these earliest philosophical writings contain a monistic (singularistic) idealism 
in which the maya doctrine is at least implicit, and on the other hand that there 
was what we may regard as a crude and primitive mystical practice and experi- 
ence in the shamanistic religion of the seers of the late Rig- Veda period. George 
F. Moore says of the methods employed by Hindu mystics for the purpose of 
inducing trance states, "At a later time these methods are systematised in the 
Yoga, hut in essentials the method is very old; it had a place in Buddhism from 
the beginning " (History of Religions, I, 1913, p. 278, italics mine) ; but, on 
the basis of what has just been said, we should judge it probable that Hindu 
mysticism was at least as early as Hindu idealism, and that the latter rests upon 
the former. 

2 Deussen, op. a^, p. 311. 



MYSTICAL AND LOGICAL IDEALISM 77 

least in large measure, upon suggestions derived from mystical 
experiences, we find in the remarkable correspondence between 
the characteristic doctrines of the Upanishads and what 
would be most naturally suggested by the psychological fea- 
tures of extreme mysticism. The doctrine of the sole reality 
of Brahman would naturally be suggested by the experience 
of rapt mystic contemplation, when all but the divine One 
lapses from consciousness. Moreover, it is noteworthy that 
it is chiefly with regard to Brahman (originally the God of mystic 
power and of prayer) , who during the Brahmana period gradu- 
ally displaced Prajapati (the Lord of creatures),^ that this 
doctrine was formulated. That Brahman (the Absolute) is 
Atman (the Absolute Self, one's own true Self) is a characteristic 
doctrine of the mystics ; we are reminded of Madame Guy on, 
whose illumination came as a consequence of the suggestion 
that God is to be sought within one's own heart. ^ The sole 
reality of the Atman and the illusory character consequently 
to be ascribed to the seemingly independently real world of 
appearance are mystical doctrines which seem to be at least 
incipiently present in what scholars take to be the oldest of 
the Upanishads.^ That knowledge of the Atman is not a 
means to emancipation (moksha) simply, but is emancipation, 
could hardly have been suggested otherwise than in a mystical 
experience at once of illumination and emotional uplift.* In the 
description of Brahman we have the usual negative theology 
of the mystics ; ^ any doctrine of God as being in relation to 
the universe is to be understood as the result of accommodation 
to the point of view of ignorance (avidya).^ Moreover 
the identification of the divine One with the syllable ''Om"^ 
seems almost meaningless, except in view of the fact that con- 

1 lb., p. 86. 

2 Of. Kathaka-upanishad, 2. 4. 1, "The wise man right within saw the Atman, 
Fastened his gaze on himself, seeking the Eternal." See Deussen, op. cit., p. 84, 
and Sacred Books of the East, Vol. XV, p. 15. 

^ E.g. Brihadaranyaka-upanishad, 2.4, 3.1-4.5; v. Sacred Books of the East, 
Vol. XV, pp. 108-13, 121-85. 

* Brihadaranyaka-upanishad, 4.2-4 ; v. S.B.E., XV, pp. 158-81 ; cf. Deussen, 
op. cit., pp. 344-55. 

^ Mundaka-upanishad, 1.1.5, 6; v. S.B.E., XV, pp. 27-8. 

' Cf. Deussen, op. cit., p. 159. 

7 Svetasvatara-upanishad, 4.18 ; v. S.B.E., XV, 253 ; Deussen, op. cit., p. 352. 



78 THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE 

centration of attention upon this syllable was used as a means 
of inducing, by self-hypnotization, a mystical experience. Even 
if sacred associations may have been established in other ways, 
still the result of mystical practice and experience would be to 
bring about a more intimate relation between the syllable and 
the idea of the divine Being. It seems equally impossible, apart 
from this reference to mysticism, to appreciate the basis of 
Yajnavalkhya's declaration, "Brahman is bhss and knowledge."^ 
The depreciation of action, or works, as "that evil thing," with 
which those who find the Atman are "no longer stained "^ 
strongly suggests the influence of a quietistic tj^pe of mysticism. 
(It is not denied, of course, that the whole karma doctrine, of 
which the passage just cited seems to be an expression, has 
other roots besides this of mysticism.) A similar significance 
should probably be found in the fact that the earliest known 
appearance of asceticism is claimed as having been among the 
Indian people ; ^ fasting and other rigors, endured at first 
perhaps involuntarily, may have led at times to the mystic 
trance ; naturally, then, such practices would be adopted as a 
voluntary system of self-discipline, looking to a repetition of so 
highly valued an experience. 

In view, then, of the thoroughly mystical character of the 
doctrines associated with early Indian idealism, we feel war- 
ranted in taking the latter as an instance of mystical idealism, 
in the sense defined. Here, as elsewhere, the primitive explana- 
tion of experience was ontological, rather than psychological; 
the Hindu mysticism was a source, as well as, in its later de- 
velopment, a consequence of Hindu philosophy. Deussen's 
conclusion has not improbably been influenced by his very evi- 
dent interest in finding a confirmation of his own philosophy 
in being able to think of it as worked out, primarily by the 
speculative method, by the sages of ancient India, as well as 
by Parmenides and Plato in ancient Greece, and again inde- 
pendently by Kant and Schopenhauer in modern Europe.^ 
His bias is further shown by his statement that the thought 

1 Brihadaranyaka-upanishad, 4.1 ; v. S.B.E., XV, pp. 153, 157. 

2 TaiUiriya-brahmanam, 3.12.9.8; v. Deussen, op. cii., p. 373. 
' Deussen, op. cit., p. 65. 

* lb., pp. 40-1 ; The System of the Vedanta, Eng. Tr., pp. 47-9. 



MYSTICAL AND LOGICAL IDEALISM 79 

that the entire universe is only appearance, and not reality, 
is the presumption and sine qua non of all religion. ^ 

Among the mediaeval mystics we meet with mystical idealism 
again, and in some cases we may even see it in process of forma- 
tion. Thus Albertus Magnus writes: ''When thou pray est, 
shut thy door — i.e. the doors of thy senses. ... A mind 
free from all occupations and distractions . . . is in a manner 
transformed into God, for it can think of nothing, and love 
nothing, except God ; other creatures and itself it sees only in God. 
. . . Do not think about the world, nor about thy friends, nor 
about the past, present or future. But consider thyself to he 
outside of the world and alone with God, as if thy soul were al- 
ready separated from the body and had no longer any interest 
in peace or war, or the state of the world. Leave thy body and 
fix thy gaze on the uncreated Light. Let nothing come between 
thee and God. The soul in contemplation views the world from 
afar off.^^ ^ According to Eckhart, again, the soul can know 
finite and material things only by creating images of such things,^ 
but the mystic is one who ''has renounced all visible creatures." ^ 
Eckhart teaches definitely that out of God there is nothing 
but nonentity. The independent existence of single objects 
is mere appearance, having its source in human thought.^ 
In the Theologia Germanica, once more, we read, "The two 
eyes of the soul of a man cannot both perform their work at 
once ; but if the soul shall see with the right eye into eternity, 
then the left eye must close itself and refrain from working, and 
be as though it were dead.'' ^ In all these passages the doctrine 
seems to be that the would-be mystic must learn to treat the 
finite and material world as unreal, until it comes to seem as 
unreal as it really is. 

In modern times perhaps our best example of mystical ideal- 
ism, whether it be regarded as taken over from traditional 

1 Philosophy of the Upanishads, p. 45. 

2 De Adhcerendo Deo, 1st paragraph; italics mine. See R. M. Jones, Studies 
in Mystical Religion, 1909, p. 219. 

3 Mystische Schriften, p. 15. 
* Strasbourg Sermons. 

5 Pfeiffer's Deutsche Mystiker, Vol. II, pp. 207, 589 ; see Ueberweg's History 
o/P/it7osop%, Eng. Tr., Vol. I, pp. 475-6, 
^ Ch. 7 ; italics mine. 



80 THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE 

sources, or as originated out of mystical experiences/ is to be 
found in the teachings of Mrs. Mary Baker G. Eddy. She 
writes : ''To understand that the Ego is Mind, and that there 
is but one Mind . . . begins at once to destroy the errors 
of mortal sense." "Mortal existence is a dream without a 
dreamer." ''Rely not in the least on the evidences of the 
senses." "All is mind, there is no matter, and you are only 
seeing and feeling your belief." "When we say, 'I have 
burned my finger,' that is a correct statement, for mortal mind 
and not matter burns the finger." " Man is not sick ; for mind 
is not sick, and matter cannot be." ^ Mrs. Eddy is to be 
credited with having endeavored to take her mystical idealism 
seriously, at least in the treatment of bodily ills as non-existent. 
But even in this realm she had to acknowledge limitations. It 
is a surprising lapse in the direction of common sense, when 
she writes, "Until the age advancing admits the efficacy and 
supremacy of mind, it is better to leave the adjustment of 
broken bones and dislocations to a surgeon, while you are re- 
constructing mentally, and preventing inflammation or pro- 
tracted confinement. . . . Mental surgery is the highest 
branch of metaphysical science, and will be understood and 
demonstrated the last." ^ 

An elaborate refutation of mystical idealism is unnecessary. 
It rests upon no more stable foundation than the notion 
that what lapses from consciousness in a special state of 
mind is thereby shown to have been unreal, non-existent. 
And in practical life, as is notorious, it cannot but refute 
itself. 

1 There are indications that Mrs. Eddy's philosophy was not something 
merely taken over from others or evolved speculatively, but that it was to some 
extent rooted in mystical or quasi-mystical experiences. When a child she 
often experienced auditory automatisms; she also tells of "a soft glow of in- 
eJBfable joy" experienced, while still a child, in response to prayer and accom- 
panied by physical healing. With reference to her peculiar doctrines the 
following quotation is significant: "When apparently near the confines of 
the death-valley, I learned certain truths: that all real being is the divine 
Mind and idea," etc. Her constant claim was that the contents of her book 
came to her by "revelation." See F. S. Hoffman, The Sphere of Religion, i>i). 
188-210. 

2 Science and Health, 1881 ed., Vol. I, pp. 68, 121, 187, 189, 226, 233. 
» lb., p. 220. 



MYSTICAL AND LOGICAL IDEALISM 81 

Logical Idealism 

There is a second elemental type of idealism, which we may 
call logical idealism. In preliminary fashion it may be defined 
as the form of idealism suggested by reflection upon the logical 
or dialectical process. Its most important historic exemplifi- 
cation is to be found, we would say, in the system of Plato ; 
but inasmuch as there has come to be some divergence of opinion 
as to what Plato's doctrine really was, some brief indication 
of the interpretation we have adopted must needs be offered. 

The recent contention on the part of Paul Natorp and 
J. A. Stewart that Plato's doctrine of ideas was essentially 
methodological, rather than metaphysical, is worthy of seri- 
ous attention. The topics chosen for dialectical discussion 
in the dialogues indicate that Plato shared the fundamentally 
practical and ethical interest of his master ; but, probably to 
an even greater degree than for Socrates himself, the "So- 
cratic" method became to the pupil an independent object of 
interest.^ The dialogues were manifestly written not alone 
to set forth an ethical and political doctrine, but also very 
largely as illustrating the dialectical method of arriving at 
adequate definitions. 

But the problem of vindicating the possibility of knowledge 
had become a real one, especially in view of the sceptical no- 
tions propagated by the Sophists; and for Plato the answer 
to the epistemological question, practically at least, seems to 
have been virtually contained in the methodology he had 
learned to employ. In true judgment, and especially in the 
case of the adequate definition, the predicate, as we shall see,^ 
has value, for practical purposes, as a substitute for further 
immediate experience of the thing of which it is predicated. 
Now this functional equivalence of the predicate, or logical idea, 
with the reality under consideration is very far from being an 

^ See, for example, Euthyphro, 5, 6, 11 ; Charmides, 159 ff. ; Laches, 191-2 ; 
Meno, 71-3, 97-8 ; Gorgias, 448 £f. ; Lysis, 212 ff. ; Republic, 507, 511, 533, 596, 
etc. ; Theaetetus, 185, 208 ; Politicus, 285 ; Laws, 965. Cf . P. Natorp, Platos 
Ideenlehre ; J. A, Stewart, Plato's Doctrine of Ideas, Part I, and Mind, N.S., 
XIX, 1910, pp. 117-21. Cf. A. E. Taylor, Mind, N.S., V, 1896, pp. 297-326, 
483-507 ; VI, 1897, pp. 9-39 ; XIX, 1910, pp. 82-97 ; Plato, 1908. 

2 Ch. XIX, infra. 
G 



82 THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE 

absolute identity of the two ; and yet it would seem that Plato 
tended to confuse the one with the other. In seeking to know 
the reality under discussion, one was seeking its true definition 
with the help of which it could be more adequately known ; it 
was a natural, although illogical, conclusion that the reality, 
the real nature or essence of anything, is just its definition. 
The *'is" of predication was here turned into the "is" of 
absolute identity. Having once arrived at the adequate logi- 
cal idea, the absolutely satisfactory and universally valid predi- 
cate, it was assumed that one would have the essence, the per- 
manent reality, of the thing. Things could be regarded as 
essentially knowable, apprehensible by rational intelligence, 
since ideas (instead of being taken as the instruments of knowl- 
edge, which they primarily are) were set up as being the true 
and indeed the only objects of knowledge, the reality of the thing 
being at the same time identified with the "absolute idea^' or 
"universal." ^ This doctrine that the reality is the (logical) 
idea, making it possible, in spite of the supposed fact that only 
ideas are knowable, to hold that reality is knowable, may be 
called the Platonic, or logical, idealism. Briefly put, it is the 
doctrine that if things are known, they must be what they are 
known with, viz. ideas. Now this, to be sure, is not, as Taylor 
observes that it is not,^ "idealism in the modern sense of the 
word," if one means by modern idealism either a psychological 
idealism like that of Berkeley, or a combination of logical with 
psychological idealism, such as we have in modern absolute 
idealism. Greek philosophy was essentially prepsychological, 
and its idealism, if we may call it such, was also prepsycholog- 
ical. But the doctrine that reality is essentially idea, such 
stuff as definitions are made of, and that it is, as such, a possible 
object of knowledge, may rightly enough, it would seem, be 
called a form of idealism. If we could suppose that Plato 
noted and remembered that all such ideas are the result of 
abstraction, and that they have their true being in and for the 
abstracting mind, we should have no difficulty in classifying 
his system as a variety of epistemological idealism. If, how- 
ever, we are led to conclude that the ideas with which things, 

1 Cratylus, 386, 439 ; Phoedo, 78 ; Philehus, 15 ; Timers, 27-8. 

2 Plato, p. 43. 



MYSTICAL AND LOGICAL IDEALISM 83 

when truly known, are to be identified are finally interpreted 
by Plato as realities existing independently of thinking, it will 
be more difficult to make the above-mentioned classification. 
The difficulty is due to the fact that in this logical idealism, 
as in all abstract idealism,^ there is the constant tendency to 
forget that the abstract idea is an idea. If, however, we may 
be allowed to correct for the "abstract idealist" this his over- 
sight, we can without doubt include his system under idealistic 
epistemological monism. But under neither of the two inter- 
pretations would there be any difficulty in classifying the system 
as an epistemological monism ; in both cases, during rational 
thought the real object and the object immediately present to 
thought are identical. 

But Natorp and Stewart offer a third suggestion. As is 
done in the former of the two interpretations suggested above, 
they maintain that, for Plato, reality is idea in the sense of 
mental construct ; but they are not willing to grant that it is 
an empty concept. Natorp, perhaps in order to gain further 
credit for his own neo-Kantian positivistic idealism, reads it 
back into Plato, as his master, H. Cohen, read it into Kant. 
Stewart, the Plato-specialist, become Plato-lover and Plato- 
idealizer, seeks to gain, one is tempted to guess, new apprecia- 
tion for the object of his veneration by showing how very credit- 
able, from modern points of view, is the whole philosophical 
system of Plato. Natorp, then, and, following him, Stewart 
agree that for Plato reality is a construct of the human mind, 
but only in the phenomenal realm, the realm of possible human 
experience. Thus when Natorp maintains that the Platonic 
"ideas" are ^^ merely the predicates of scientific judgments," ^ 
we must not fail to interpret this as simply one of the premises 
in a train of reasoning by which it is supposed that Plato taught 
the essentials of what the neo-Kantian beheves. The premises 
are the following : Things are ideas ; ideas are predicates ; 
predicates are thought-constructs. The conclusion is the neo- 
Kantian doctrine : Things are thought-constructs. But while 
we would reject the first of these three premises, and therewith 
the conclusion, Plato, as we shall maintain, would have re- 
jected the third; or, if not the third, the second; for, while 

1 See Ch. IX, infra. 2 Qp^ ^i^^ p, 351 j italics mine. 



84 THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE 

he held that things are ideas, he had no intention of asserting 
that things are mere thought-constructs. Similarly the doc- 
trine of the '^ participation" of the things of sense-experience 
in the non-sensuous, eternal ideas, which Plato confesses that 
he has been ''always and everywhere repeating," ^ is interpreted 
by Stewart as meaning that the perceived object is "constructed 
by the activity of mental categories."^ '''Participation' is 
predication," he writes in good neo-Kantian fashion,^ and 
Taylor applauds the assertion.^ 

But this attempt to make Plato a neo-Kantian will hardly do. 
Plato never held that the object which appears to us in 
sense-experience is a construct of human mental activity. 
What it would be true to say is that the ideas which we predi- 
cate of these objects of sense-experience are constructs of 
human thought; but even this seems to have been largely 
ignored by the Attic philosopher. His doctrine was not that 
real existence is a mental construct, nor even that the true idea 
is such a construct. Real existence is a discovery, something 
discovered, not a construct; and the true idea, the universal 
or absolute idea, the definition, is also a discovery, not a con- 
struct. And since the discovery is at once of the existence and 
the idea, it is assumed that there is absolutely no difference 
between the real existence and the true idea. The fallacious 
analysis here is easily exposed. As was intimated above, the 
assumption is that our knowledge of reality by means of an 
idea is simply knowledge of the idea ; whereas the idea is not 
as such the object but merely the instrument of knowledge. 
But what we are here especially interested in emphasizing is 
that the attempt to interpret Plato as in essential agreement 
with the neo-Kantian idealism is, for the reasons given, funda- 
mentally mistaken. 

Since the "universal idea," then, is, in the Platonic system, 
not a construct of human thought, but its discovery, it almost 
inevitably comes to be regarded as a permanent reality, inde- 
pendent of human cognition. Alongside of the Platonic or 
logical idealism, the doctrine that realities are ideas, there 
tends to develop a logical realism,, the doctrine that ideas, logi- 

1 Phxdo, 100. 2 Op. cit., p. 67 ; italics mine. 

3 lb., p. 77. 4 Mind, XIX, 1910, p. 82. 



MYSTICAL AND LOGICAL IDEALISM 85 

cal entities, are independent realities. Let us see, if we can, 
whether the Platonic (or logical) idealism gave rise to, or even 
passed over into, a Platonic (or logical) realism. In affirming 
that reality is really a logical idea, a definition, the logical 
idealist is saying that reality is really something abstracted 
from reality. It is small wonder, then, that the position proves 
to be one of unstable equilibrium. Logical idealism is a form 
of abstract idealism which tends to pass over into a psychologi- 
cal idealism,^ or else into logical realism. If the abstractness 
of the logical idea (as related to reality) were consistently recog- 
nized, with the consequence of the identification of the reality 
with the logical idea as it is in its mental context, i.e. with the 
definition when and as it is thought, what we would have would 
be no longer the original logical idealism, but a psychological 
idealism, of a somewhat Fichtean or neo-Kantian type. But 
such was not Plato's doctrine. The Platonic logical idealism 
could hardly have been held if the philosopher had not ab- 
stracted from the fact that the logical idea is itself an abstract, 
actually existing only in a context of consciousness. If, on the 
other hand, the abstraction be taken abstractly, i.e. if the 
abstractness of the idea, with reference to (what we call) real 
objects, be abstracted from, we shall have, in the doctrine that 
all realities are independently real ideas, the source of the con- 
verse proposition which, when logically inferred, is the doctrine 
that some logical ideas are objective realities ; when illogically, 
the doctrine that all logical ideas are objectively and independ- 
ently real. Thus it would seem to be a plausible hypothesis 
that, by a process of double abstraction, Plato was led from his 
methodology, first to logical idealism, and then, because of his 
not recognizing what he had done, through this disguised logi- 
cal idealism to logical realism.^ 
But that the independently real ideas of Plato's doctrine 

1 See Ch. VI, infra. 

2 Inasmuch, also, as this second abstraction (to which we shall have occasion 
to refer again, first in our discussion of the disintegration of idealism in Ch. 
IX, and again in tracing the antecedents of the new realism, in Ch. X) 
remains unrecognized, it may be said that it, too, is taken abstractly. But 
since what we mean by abstraction in this connection is simply not recognizing 
an important actual relation, our criticism, that the fact of abstraction is itself 
abstracted from, does not lead us into any "indefinite regress." 



86 THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE 

are thoughts of the divine Mind, which was the form the teach- 
ing took in Philo, in Plotinus, and in the earHer mediaeval 
philosophy, must not be read back into the thought of Plato 
himself. The opposite mistake, however, seems to have been 
made by the recent interpreters to whom we have referred, 
when they deny that Plato has any doctrine of the metaphysi- 
cally real existence of ideas. ^ It may be admitted that such 
interpreters as Zeller ^ and Windelband ^ may have insufficiently 
appreciated the methodological interest of Plato, and may 
have attached too much importance to the metaphysical aspects 
of Plato's thought. One may even suppose that Aristotle, in 
spite of his unique opportunity for knowing what Plato really 
thought, in stating as the essence of Plato's doctrine that which 
he felt it essential to eliminate, exaggerated the extent to which 
his master was concerned to insist upon the real existence of 
ideas beyond all possible human experience.^ His sketch is 
perhaps something of a caricature, as interpretations often are. 
But with the help of such an expositor as Gomperz,^ it is pos- 
sible to understand how a conclusion which seems foreign to 
our ways of thinking may have come to seem natural and even 
necessary to the mind of Plato. 

There are indications, however, that Plato had some mis- 
givings with regard to this metaphysical aspect of his doctrine. 
By this we do not mean that he detected any fallacy in his 
processes, but only that he gives evidence of dissatisfaction with 
the results. His logical realism was the converse of his logi- 
cal idealism, and when the question is raised as to whether 
the conversion was performed in a logical or an illogical manner, 
the answer should probably be that it was not one or the other 
simply, but both : at times the doctrine seems to be that all 
universal logical ideas are independently real existences; at 
other times it seems to be that only some of such ideas have 
transcendent existence. The explanation undoubtedly is that 

1 Natorp, op. ciL, pp. 63-4, 70-1, 73-4, 86, 126-7, 131 ; Stewart, op. cit., pp. 
37, 40, 62-5, 83. See Taylor, Mind, V, 1896, p. 505 ; Plato, p. 48 ; Mind, XIX, 
1910, p. 93. 

2 Plato and the Older Academy, pp. 227, 235, 247, 271-6. 

» History of Ancient Philosophy, pp. 193, 196; History of Philosophy, p. 118. 

* See Metaphysics, XII, 3. 1070a. 18 ff., 28. 

6 Greek Thinkers, Eng. Tr., Vol. II, pp. 180-2 ; Vol. Ill, pp. 4-7. 



MYSTICAL AND LOGICAL IDEALISM 87 

here Plato's thought had not reached a state of equihbrium, 
but continued to oscillate somewhat between the two positions. 
In the one instance the doctrine we have called logical idealism 
— itself more than doubtfully founded — was converted simply 
and illogically as follows : All realities are ideas ; therefore 
all ideas are realities. In the other instance the conversion 
was by limitation, and therefore logically, as follows : All reali- 
ties are ideas ; therefore some ideas are realities. It is remark- 
able that it is the formally logical converse which is made the 
basis of the more extreme and metaphysical doctrines of Plato, 
while the formally illogical converse becomes the basis of his 
more moderate and positivistic thought. This is doubtless 
because, as we shall see, the former is supported by semi-mysti- 
cal considerations, while the latter, the inference that all ideas 
are realities, is defended by confining its expHcit application 
to experienced objects. 

We shall first deal with the doctrine that some ideas are 
eternal and transcendent realities. Besides the oft-quoted 
explicit passages in the Phcedrus ^ and the Timceus,^ there is 
the characteristic doctrine of knowledge as '^ reminiscence," ^ 
with its implication that both the soul and its objects, the ideas, 
are eternal. Possibly, as Taylor suggests,* under the influence 
of the experience and thought of Socrates, Plato developed the 
doctrine that before birth, as well as after death, the soul con- 
stantly enjoys the ''beatific vision" of the eternal ideas, and 
during the present life only with difficulty recollects (or antici- 
pates) something of that experience, in a state which amounts, 
at its best, to a ''rapt amazement" or "sort of ecstasy." ^ We 
see at this point how natural was the transition from the philos- 
ophy of Plato to the definitely mystical idealism of Plotinus ; 
but it is not clear that in the case of Plato there was any dis- 
tinctly mystical religious experience, or anything more than 
the contemplation of the logical ideas until they became, through 
projected feeling, things of beauty, unique and unchangeable; 
and so, glowing with that subjective "light which never was on 

1 247. 2 51-2. 

3 See, for example, Phcedo, 67-8, 74-6 ; Phcedrus, 249-50. 

* Mind, XIX, 1910, p. 94 ; cf. Varia Socratica, 1911, pp. 16, 22-4, 30, etc. 

^ Phcedo, 72 ; Phcedrus, 249-51 ; cf. Symposium, 210, 



88 THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE 

sea or land," they were substantiated as eternally real exist- 
ences.^ Obviously, however, this semi-mystical contempla- 
tion would find place only in the case of some of the ideas, such 
as the idea of the Good, and its included ideas; or, in other 
words, the ideas of the ''eternal values." This was the element 
of Platonism that impressed itself upon the religious conscious- 
ness of later generations, and that was retained with theistic or 
pantheistic modifications, by Philo, Plotinus, Dionysius, and 
the ''Platonic realists" of the middle ages. 

But this semi-mystical contemplation of the Ideas would 
give no support to the notion of an eternal existence of the 
ideas of "hair, mud and dirt." ^ And yet in the Thecetetus it is 
taught that every object of thought must exist,^ while in the 
Parmenides we find any reluctance to believe that every object 
of sense, however mean, has its eternal idea, treated as evidence 
of philosophical immaturity.* Shall we conclude, then, with 
Stewart,^ that Plato is here simply criticising a metaphysical 
doctrine which he himself never held, but which was simply a 
common misinterpretation of his teaching on the part of his 
disciples, his own doctrine having been strictly and consistently 
methodological? Or, shall we give up the attempt to find 
consistency, and conclude, with Gomperz,^ that the Parmenides 
was written when the philosopher's mind was in a state of 
ferment, and that it simply considers a number of plausible 
objections to his own theory, without reaching a conclusive 
answer to them — in which case its doctrine would be compara- 
tively negligible? Or shall we hold, with D. G. Ritchie,' that 
we have here, in one of Plato's later dialogues, written perhaps 
under the influence of the young Aristotle himself, an approach 
to the Aristotelian doctrine that ideas have real existence only 
in minds and as the forms of the things of sense? Adopting 
this third interpretation, we should be able to see how, accord- 
ing to Plato, the ideas are to be regarded as causes, not only of 

1 Cf. Stewart, op. cit, Pt. II, especially pp. 139^0, 167, 184, 186, 194, 196. 

2 Parmenides, 130. 

3 Thecetetus, 189; of. Republic, 476, 510; compare Hegel's "The rational is 
real." 

* Parmenides, 130 ; see also 132-5. 

5 Op. cit., pp. 70-80 ; cf. Natorp, op. cit. 

^ Greek Thinkers, III, pp. 150-1. "> Plato, pp. 115-19. 



I 



MYSTICAL AND LOGICAL IDEALISM 89 

knowledge, but of being and essence ;'i they are the rational 
forms of reality, the universalia in rebus, without which the 
things of sense could not exist, but which are eternally real, 
not constructs of the activity of the human mind. In this 
phase of his thought Plato was the pathfinder for Aristotle.^ 
But for our present interest in the problem of acquaintance 
the essence of Plato's doctrine is the Platonic, or logical, or 
dialectical, idealism, the doctrine that reality is constituted 
of logical ideas, albeit in systematic relation to each other, and 
that we have thus direct acquaintance with reality in the 
ideas of logical thought. The fallacious reasoning upon which 
this variety of idealistic absolute epistemological monism is 
based has already been exposed. It may be well, however, to 
refer once more to the fact that an idea, even when it amounts 
to a definition, is very far from being existentially identical 
with that of which it is an adequate idea, or definition. The 
logical idea is always, as related to the reality under consider- 
ation, not the reality, but an abstraction from it or from others 
of its class. In the psychical context it is a reality, a mental 
product; but in the objective context it is not a reality. So 
then, to say that a reality is the logical idea which may be predi- 
cated of it, is virtually to say that the reality is not a reality, 
but an abstraction from reality. The inexpugnable error of 
logical idealism is abstractionism. 

Mystical-Logical Idealism 

The two elemental forms of idealism which we have already 
examined, viz. mystical and logical idealism, exist in combina- 
tion in what may consequently be called mystical-logical ideal- 
ism. Of this first composite form of idealism to demand our 
attention the best historical example is doubtless the philos- 
ophy of Plotinus. This system is built upon the Platonic 
dialectic ^ and mystical religion,^ an ecstatic experience which 
Plotinus is said to have had several times ^ and which seems to 

1 Republic, 509 ; Timceus, 58. 

2 It is at this point that we see how plausible is the neo-Kantian interpreta- 
tion of Plato's doctrine; but, as we have already insisted, that the object of 
sense-experience is a mental construct is wholly foreign to Plato's thought. 

3 Enneades, I, iii, 3-5. " lb., VI, ix, 4, 8-11. 
^ See Porphyrius, Vita Plotini, Qh. 23, 



90 THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE 

be given credit for a certain phase of the philosophy in the 
prayer of Plotinus for insight into the relation of the Many to 
the One.^ As results of the synthesis we have, practically 
speaking, two Absolutes, the one mystical and the other logical, 
and a double basis for an idealistic interpretation of the physi- 
cal. The logical Absolute is Intellect (Nous), in which all 
things exist eternally as the world of absolute ideas, or pure 
essences.^ This interpretation of the logical Absolute as a 
metaphysical reality is a further development of the Platonic 
logical realism. The mystical Absolute, on the other hand, is 
the perfect One, the first God, contemplated by the mystic as 
that with which his soul seeks union. ^ Here we have mystical 
realism ; the Absolute of mystical experience is affirmed to be 
the ultimate Reality. And yet for Plotinus, fundamentally, 
these two Absolutes are one. The dialectician can get no nearer 
to ultimate Reality than as far as Intellect, the world of rational 
forms; the mystic penetrates further and becomes absorbed 
in the One. There is nothing in Intellect which is not, in some 
sense, in the One ; although not all of the One is in Intellect, 
or can be reached by intellection.^ 

But, more to our purpose than this synthesis of mystical and 
logical realism in the absolutism of Plotinus, is the way in 
which mystical and logical idealism are combined in his essen- 
tially idealistic interpretation of physical objects. As the 
realism of the mystics with regard to the rehgious Object has 
commonly been led to an idealistic interpretation of physical 
objects, and as the logical realism of Plato and his followers 
originated in what we have called a logical idealism in the inter- 
pretation of the things of experience, so the combined mysti- 
cal and logical realism of Plotinus with reference to the Abso- 
lute on the one hand conditioned, and on the other hand was 
conditioned by, an idealistic interpretation of the physical. 
The One, being perfect, and therefore in want of nothing, ''be- 
comes, as it were, overflowing, and the superplenitude of it 
produces something else." Its first product, or emanation, is 
Intellect, the Absolute of logical reahsm.^ Similarly the soul 

1 Enneades, V, i, 6. ^ /&., m, ix ; V, i, 7 ; ix, 4, 8-11 ; VI, ix, 2. 

« lb., Ill, viii, 8, 9 ; ix, 3 ; V, i, 7 ; ii, 1 ; VI. ix, 4, 8-11. * lb., VI, ix, 4. 
5/6., V,i, 6; ii, 1. 



MYSTICAL AND LOGICAL IDEALISM 91 

is the product, by emanation, of Intellect.^ The Soul, again, 
produces all animals and inspires them with life.^ But the 
world is also an animal, comprehending within itself all ani- 
mals.^ Hence all things physical depend upon Soul for their 
existence and, inasmuch as Soul depends upon Intellect, and 
Intellect upon the One, all things physical depend for their 
existence upon Intellect (or the absolute idea), as in logical 
idealism ; or, to speak still more ultimately, they depend, for 
what being they have, upon the undifferentiated One of mystical 
intuition. 

Obviously, the criticisms which are valid against mystical 
and logical idealism in separation are still valid against the 
idealism resulting from their combination. Neither of the 
elemental types was incomplete merely ; each, as we have seen, 
was the result of positively erroneous suggestion. Hence 
they cannot be said each to supplement the deficiencies of the 
other; rather does each, by appearing to confirm the other, 
simply afford the mystic-philosopher a deceptive feeling of 
security in his twofold error. 

1 76., V, i, 7. 2 75., V, i, 2. » 76., V, ix, 9. 



CHAPTER VI 
Psychological Idealism 

Besides mystical and logical idealism, there is a third ele- 
mental type of idealistic philosophy, viz. psychological idealism. 
This may be defined, in preliminary fashion, as the interpreta- 
tion of the physical object, under the influence of an erroneous 
suggestion arising in connection with the psychological point of 
view, as being essentially idea, in the psychological sense of that 
word, i.e. as being simply a part of consciousness, a content of 
conscious life which depends upon consciousness for its exist- 
ence. 

As contrasted with the other elemental forms of idealism, 
this psychological type is characteristically modern. This is 
undoubtedly connected with the fact that psychology may be 
said to be, almost exclusively, a modern science. Ancient and 
mediaeval thought were both essentially prepsychological, the 
former through lack of consciousness of self as soul, the latter 
through defect of scientific spirit. But already at the dawn of 
modern philosophy we find a dualism, a consciousness of prob- 
lem in connection with mind and matter. The new conscious- 
ness of self or soul, as constituting a subjective world and not 
as a mere element or principle of activity in the objective 
world, was probably due in large part to two causes. First, 
there was the attention given in the Christian religion and in 
mysticism to the soul, with the accompanying high estimate of 
its value and the sense of momentous importance attaching 
to its different states. And, secondly, there was, as seen in the 
Renaissance and the Reformation, as later in the Aufklarung 
and the Revolution, the protest of the individual against the 
established order. In opposing themselves to the objective 
social order, men became more conscious of themselves as 
subjects.^ 

1 Cf. J. Dewey, Philosophical Review, XVIII, 1909, pp. 182-3. 
92 



1 



PSYCHOLOGICAL IDEALISM 93 

But, be the explanation what it may, the duaHsm of the 
psychical and the physical was especially prominent in the 
thought of the early modern philosophers. Its place was funda- 
mental in the systems of Descartes and his immediate followers 
among the rationalists, and in that of Locke among the empiri- 
cists; and the later rationalists and empiricists alike busied 
themselves with the problems to which it first gave prominence. 
These problems were chiefly two, viz. how such essentially dif- 
ferent substances as body and mind could interact on each 
other, and how mind could know extra-mental objects. The 
earlier solutions, apart from the Cartesian appeal to a deus ex 
machina, were three : absolute monism, represented by Spinoza ; 
monadism, represented by Leibniz ; and, finally, psychological 
idealism, of which Berkeley was the pioneer and a typical repre- 
sentative. According to absolute monism, there is no interac- 
tion of substances, since there is but one substance; and the 
test of cognitive value is something immanent, viz. rationality. 
According to monadism there is neither interaction nor im- 
mediate awareness of external reality, but only immanent 
action and cognition, the difficulties of the view being relieved 
to some extent by means of the dogma of a pre-established 
harmony securing the appearance of transeunt action and cogni- 
tion. According to psychological idealism, there is no material 
substance, but only minds with their ideas ; from this point of 
view, therefore, the problems of interaction between mind and 
matter and of knowledge of external reality disappear as false 
problems. It is with this last philosophical doctrine that we 
are here concerned. 

Now it will be seen on examination that the dialectic culmi- 
nating in subjective idealism should by no means be regarded 
as convincing. Besides the fact that other solutions offered 
(absolutism and monadism) are no more fantastic from the 
point of view of common sense, there is the question whether 
philosophy is justified in taking up as its task the explaining 
away of the appearance of interaction. May it not be that 
action and interaction are ultimate facts, which are tO be 
acknowledged rather than denied and explained away as mere 
appearance? Can mystery be eliminated from the fact of 
becoming, even without the hypothesis of interaction? And 



94 THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE 

with reference to knowledge of external reality, may it not be 
that the problem here arises because of a false mode of conceiv- 
ing the mind, as a quasi-spatial receptacle, which can contain 
only mental entities, viz. ideas, in the psychological sense. 
Another view of mind and consciousness might cause this 
problem to disappear without the drastic expedient of denying 
the reality of material objects altogether. 

But it was not simply as the synthesis of apparent antinomies 
that psychological idealism arose. It was presented as the 
outcome of an analysis of experience, such as is performed in 
the most elementary psychological study, or, at least, as a 
legitimate inference from the results of this analysis. Hence, 
as we have intimated, the name, psychological idealism. What 
we mean, then, by psychological idealism is the doctrine that 
things are ideas in the mind, or in consciousness; that they 
depend for their existence upon their being in the mind, or at 
least in the conscious relation to some subject. That this 
doctrine is pure dogma will appear when it is shown that the 
argument in support of it, when stated as a formal inference, 
cannot be other than fallacious, and this because the original 
analysis was vitiated from the start by a natural but erroneous 
suggestion. Man had the problem of accounting for illusion 
and error, the content of which after all had some sort of reality, 
for it was there in experience. Since it was found not to have 
objective reality, itg reahty must be subjective; its existence, 
in so far as its illusory or erroneous features were concerned, 
was dependent upon its being object for some conscious subject. 
Thus it may be said that the consciousness of self and of the 
relation of objects experienced to the self naturally arise to- 
gether, illusory objects being subjective in a twofold sense, 
i.e. as dependent upon the conscious self for their existence, 
and as related to a self which is conscious of them. But it is 
noticed, at least when one begins to psychologize, that all 
objects of which one is conscious, whether illusory or not, are 
subjective, at least in the sense of being related to a self which 
is conscious of them ; and, further, that the psychical processes 
in the two cases of normal and abnormal perception are mainly 
the same. It is an easy step, consequently, for unclear think- 
ing to conclude that these objects are all subjective in the 



PSYCHOLOGICAL IDEALISM 95 

other sense, i.e. that they are dependent upon the conscious- 
ness of the conscious self for their existence. The fallacy may 
appear as one of equivocation — the common fallacy of ''four 
terms" — as in the following syllogism: What is subjective 
(dependent on self for existence) is not externally real, but 
mere idea; all objects of which we are aware are subjective 
(related to a self which is conscious of them) ; therefore, all 
objects of which we are aware are not externally real, but mere 
ideas. Or, if the equivocation be avoided, the fallacy will re- 
main as that of an "undistributed middle term," as in this 
syllogism : The unreal objectively is subjective (related to a 
subject) ; similarly, all of which one is conscious is subjective 
(related to a subject) ; therefore, all of which one is conscious 
is unreal objectively (mere idea). Or, more simply, psychologi- 
cal idealism may be said to rest upon a fallacious conversion. 
From the obvious truth that all elements which depend on 
consciousness for their existence, such as pains, feelings, desires, 
etc., are in the subjective relation, i.e. are objects for a subject, 
it is inferred, by the fallacious process of simple conversion, 
that all that is in the subjective relation, all that is object for a 
subject, is dependent upon consciousness and this relation to 
consciousness for its own existence. 

This is the fallacy of arguing for idealism from what R. B. 
Perry has called "the egocentric predicament." ^ We can 
never be conscious of any object that is not in the relation of 
object of consciousness to ourselves as subject — this is the 
"egocentric predicament"; but, as Perry justly urges, this 
fact proves nothing at all as to whether there are or are not 
other objects not in conscious relation to ourselves, or to any 
other subject. D. H. MacGregor has made substantially the 
same point in his exposure of what he calls "the great fallacy 
of idealism." He points out that what idealism has proved is 
that "reality cannot be thought as existing, independently of 
thought," but that what it believes it has proved is that "reaUty 
cannot be thought, as existing independently of thought." ^ 
But the same criticism was made years before by T. H. Green, 

^Journal of Philosophy, etc., VII, 1910, pp. 5-14; Present Philosophical 
Tendencies, pp. 129 ff. 

2 Hibbert Journal, IV, 1906, p. 788. 



96 THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE 

not against the idealistic doctrine, but against this psycho- 
logically ideahstic argument, as used by John Caird. The prop- 
osition ''that no object can be conceived as existing except in 
relation to a thinking subject," must not, he points out, be 
confused with the proposition " that it cannot exist except in 
that relation." ^ 

We are not contending that psychological idealism, can, by 
such logical criticism as we have urged, be proved to be false; 
we simply maintain that the arguments by which it was sup- 
posed to be proved true may be shown, by this logical criti- 
cism, to be worthless, so that there appears as yet no good 
reason why a view so artificial and so difficult of adoption in 
practice should be regarded as true. This applies to psycho- 
logical idealism, whether in its Berkeleian form, where the self 
is thought of as a passive recipient, and perceived objects as 
''ideas," because mere sense-data; or in the form in which it 
was presented by Fichte, where the self is thought of as crea- 
tive, and perceived objects as contents in consciousness, con- 
structed by mental activity (Berkeley was influenced by 
Locke's view of mind as a tabula rasa, while Fichte followed 
Leibniz and Kant in emphasizing the self -activity of thought) ; 
or, finally, in the intermediate form of a psychological or sub- 
jective neo-Kantianism, in which the self is thought of as pas- 
sive with reference to sensations but creative with regard to 
relations and perceived objects, consequently as being partly 
datum and partly thought-construct, but in both cases mere 
dependent content of consciousness. 

Besides these Berkeleian, Fichtean, and neo-Kantian types 
of psychological idealism, there is another line of subdivision, 
which, to a certain extent, runs across the other groups, or at 
least across the first and the last. This is the division between 
what we may call the undisguised and the disguised psycho- 
logical idealists. The former have the courage of their convic- 
tions ; they acknowledge their subjectivism, emphasizing the 
constant subjectivity of objects. The latter, the disguised 
psychological idealists, seek to cover up their subjectivism, 
even from themselves, by means of a device which proves in 
the end to be merely verbal. They speak of subject and 

^ Works, Vol. Ill, 1888, p. 144. Cf. p. 134 infra. 



PSYCHOLOGICAL IDEALISM! &7 

object as being opposite poles of experience, and of the con- 
tent of experience as alternating between subjectivity and 
objectivity; normally it is objective, but under certain condi- 
tions it may become subjective. Or, as some prefer to put it, 
originally experience was neutral, neither subjective nor objec- 
tive, but under certain conditions subjectivity is introduced, 
and with it, by way of contrast, objectivity. But the experi- 
ence of which this is an approximate description, it should not 
be forgotten, is conscious experience, the experience which a 
self has. The objects of conscious experience are always sub- 
jective, in the sense of being in the conscious relation to a sub- 
ject; but under certain conditions we pay attention to this 
relation, we think of the objects as being in the conscious rela- 
tion ; that is, we make their subjectivity (relatedness to a sub- 
ject) an object of thought. But this does not make the original 
objects of consciousness for the first time subjective ; as objects 
of consciousness they were as subjective — as much related to 
a conscious self — when thought of simply as things, as they 
are now that we are thinking of them as objects-thought-about. 
It surely will not be maintained that the relation of being 
object for a subject could not exist except as that relation 
itself is made the object of conscious attention. 

But whether of the passive, the active, or the intermediate 
type, and whether disguised or undisguised, psychological 
idealism is, we shall contend, in all its forms a malady which 
the psychologist-philosopher needlessly inflicts upon himself; 
in all its forms it is an unnatural, unnecessary, and inde- 
fensible dogma. To further justify this statement we must 
set forth in some detail and in their systematic context the 
chief historical and contemporary varieties of this type of 
idealism. 

The earlier representatives of psychological idealism are so 
well known and have been so often discussed in philosophical 
treatises, that we may pass them with but brief mention. In 
Berkeley's doctrine objects are combinations of ''sensations 
or ideas imprinted on the sense" ; they are the things we per- 
ceive by sense, and as such they can be no more, it is claimed, 
than our own ideas or sensations, no one of which can exist 
unperceived; their esse is per dpi; the object and the sensa- 



98 THE PROBLEM OP KNOWLEDGE 

tion are one and the same thing.^ Here, obviously, we have the 
result of the fallacious process which we have just pointed out. 
But in Berkeley's system the existence of 'Hhe perceiving active 
being" which we call mind, spirit, soul, or self, whether of God 
as the creator of ideas, or of man as their recipient, is assumed. 
Its esse is not per dpi; it is not any one of our ideas, but "si 
thing entirely distinct from them, wherein they exist, or, 
which is the same thing, whereby they are perceived." ^ But 
essentially the same arguments by which belief in an inde- 
pendent material reality was supposedly discredited would 
serve to discredit Berkeley's own belief in a transcendent God 
and substantial human souls. A more thoroughgoing psycho- 
logical idealism would say of God and of souls also that their 
esse is percipi, and Hume did not hesitate to take this further 
step. 

Hume adopted and tried to carry out to the bitter end the 
central thesis of psychological idealism, viz. that .''nothing is 
ever really present with the mind but its impressions and ideas," 
the latter being defined as faint images, or impressions derived 
from impressions; but what he means here by ''mind" is no 
simple and immaterial substance, but simply the successive 
impressions and ideas, united by certain relations, especially 
that of cause and effect.^ We have no idea of substance, either 
material or mental, he holds, except a collection of ideas united 
by the imagination and given a particular name.^ The idea of 
existence or external existence is the very same with the idea 
of what we conceive to be existent. On the one hand every 
impression or idea is conceived as existent, and on the other 
hand every idea of existence is some particular impression or 
idea.^ Here we have an originally subjective empirical idealism 
seeking to become self-consistent by applying its doctrine to 
the subject (as object) as well as to (other) objects, with the 
result that, verbally, it ceases to be subjective, and becomes at 
this point what has recently been called immediate or pure 
empiricism. The system thus points in the direction of a dis- 

^ "Treatise on the Principles of Human Knowledge," in Fraser's Selections 
from Berkeley, pp. 33-6. 

» Ih., p. 33. 3 A Treatise of Human Nature, pp. 67, 253. 

4/6., p. 16. »/6., p. 66. 



PSYCHOLOGICAL IDEALISM 99 

guised psychological idealism; but it cannot be said really to 
succeed in eliminating subjectivism. It is not with mind as 
object, but with mind as subject, that all impressions and 
ideas are present; and yet it is only mind as object that can 
be reduced, on Hume's principles, to successive impressions and 
ideas ; all of the impressions and ideas, without exception, are 
present with the mind, which cannot, therefore, be regarded as 
one of those impressions. Hume himself admits that his phi- 
losophy encounters at this point a difficulty that seems in- 
superable. "All my hopes vanish," he writes, "when I come 
to explain the principles that unite our successive perceptions 
in our thought or consciousness. I cannot discover any theory 
which gives me satisfaction on this head. In short, there are 
two principles which I cannot render consistent ; nor is it in my 
power to renounce either of them, viz. that all our distinct per- 
ceptions are distinct existences, and that the mind never perceives 
any real connexion among distinct existences.^' ^ In other words, 
as a would-be radical empiricist he does not know what to do 
with our evident knowledge of relations to which, apparently, 
no elements of sense correspond. His theory calls for a dif- 
ferent sense-impression for every different relation, because 
relations are to him simply ideas of relations, and ideas simply 
impressions of sense-impressions. Manifestly, then, if it can 
be shown that there are some relations or ideas of relations to 
which no impressions correspond, we have the self -refutation 
of passive psychological idealism as the effect of the effort to 
be thoroughgoing and consistent in the application of the 
theory. If, however, it be maintained, as by William James,^ 
that there are feelings of all relations of which we have any 
idea, the question is still to be asked whether such feelings are 
definite enough to account for the ideas. As a matter of fact 
our ideas of relations are ordinarily much more definite than 
our immediate feelings of those relations. Moreover, the 
easy identification of relations and ideas of relations in the 
Humian system is explicable only as it is found to rest upon 
the fallacious reasoning from the egocentric predicament 
noted above. 

1 lb., pp. 635-6. 

2 A Pluralistic Universe, p. 280 ; Essays in Radical Empiricism, pp. 41-3. 



100 THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE 

According to John Stuart Mill, we know and can know no 
more of material objects than the senses tell us.^ What they 
tell us directly is simply what our own sensations are. Rela- 
tions between sensations may be resolved into a difference in 
our sensations.^ All we can know of objects, directly or in- 
directly, is the sensations which they actually excite, or which 
we imagine them exciting in ourselves.^ The conception one 
forms of the world as it is at any moment comprises, along 
with the sensations he is feeling, a countless variety of possi- 
bilities of sensation ; viz. the whole of those which past obser- 
vation tells him he could, under any supposable circumstances, 
experience at that moment, together with an indefinite and 
illimitable multitude of others which it is possible he might 
experience in circumstances unknown to him.^ Thus matter 
or external nature is nothing but the permanent possibility of 
sensation, which, unlike actual sensation, is common to all 
individuals.^ The belief in such permanent possibiHties con- 
tains all that is essential in the behef in substance.® Real 
externality to us of anything other than other minds is incapable 
of proof. "^ Moreover, of mind itself our knowledge is entirely 
relative.^ Mind, as we know it, may be regarded as nothing 
but a series of feelings, together with a permanent possibiHty 
of feeling.^ At this point, however. Mill has to admit that he 
experiences a final difficulty : in the case of mind the series of 
feelings is aware of itself as a series, extending from the past 
through the present into the future. ^^ This is essentially the 
same difficulty as Hume encountered. Even if all objects, 
including the subject in so far as it is object, could be reduced 
to feelings, there would still be the subject to which these feel- 
ings are present to be accounted for. Here, again, as in the 
case of Himae, self -refutation in the end is the penalty of fallacy 
in the beginning. 

W. K. Clifford describes the self as a stream of feehngs such 
that each of them is capable of a faint repetition, and that when 
two of them have occurred together the repetition of the one 

1 An Examination of Sir William Hamilton's Philosophy, 3d ed., pp. 6, 7 ; see 
especially Chs. II, XI, and XII. 

2 lb., p. 7. 3 75.^ p. 8. * lb., p. 222. 
5 76., p. 227. 6 lb., p. 229. 7 75.^ p. 232. 
8 lb., p. 235. 9 76., pp. 236, 238. "> 76., p. 242. 



PSYCHOLOGICAL IDEALISM 101 

calls up the other, according to certain rules. ^ The object is 
defined as a set of changes in consciousness, and not anything 
out of it, whether or not there are things-in-themselves which 
are not objects. The physical object, whether presented or 
inferred, is always a part of one's own consciousness ; but the 
mind of another can never be an object in my consciousness. 
The inferred other conscious selves are ejects, things thrown 
out of consciousness, and recognized as not being a part of me.^ 
Clifford then goes on to develop his view in a way that antici- 
pates to some extent what we have called disguised psycho- 
logical idealism. A feeling is not my feeling, he maintains, 
until on reflection I remember it as my feeling. Thus a feeling 
can exist by itself, without forming part of a consciousness. 
Such elementary feelings, or eject-elements, might well be the 
true things-in-themselves. Moreover, a thoroughgoing parallel- 
ism of the physical and the mental is inferred from "the doc- 
trine of evolution," with its principle of an unbroken line of 
ascent, which is supposed to necessitate the conclusion that, 
since consciousness has been evolved, "some ejective fact or 
event which might be a part of consciousness" corresponds to 
every motion of matter.^ 

This panpsychism is brought out most clearly in connection 
with the following considerations. Let us suppose that I see 
a man, whom we will call A, looking at a candlestick, which I 
also see. The candlestick is material, but this means simply a 
group of my sensations, actual and possible. There is an image 
in A's brain, representing, i.e. corresponding, point for point, to 
the candlestick, which is external to him. This cerebral image, 
like the candlestick, is material ; but this again means simply a 
group of my possible sensations. But there is in A's mind an 
image, or perception, representing the external reality, and 
this mental image which A has is, of course, nothing but mind- 
stuff ; it is to be interpreted, not as my object, but as my eject. 
But if A's mental image of the candlestick is related (repre- 
sentatively) to the externally real candlestick which he sees, as 
A's (material) cerebral image is related to the material candle- 

1 "Body and Mind," Humboldt Library of Science, No. 145, p. 16. 

2 "On the Nature of Things-in-Themselves," Humboldt Library of Science, 
No. 145, pp. 28, 29, 31. s /^.^ pp. 33^ 35_6. 



102 THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE 

stick which I see, then, since this relation in the latter case is 
fundamentally a relation of identity of stuff (in this case, 
matter), the conclusion follows that the external reality which 
A sees must be made up of mind-stuff, just as his mental image 
is. Both are my ejects. But both of my objects (A's cerebral 
image and the candlestick which I see), although material, are, 
as we have seen, nothing but (my) mind-stuff. " The universe, 
then, consists entirely of mind-stuff. . . . Matter is a mental 
picture in which mind-stuff is the thing represented." ^ 

In Clifford's system we have a psychological idealism resting 
upon the usual incorrect analysis of objects as sensations ; but 
his doctrine is complicated by the further application of the 
principle of psychological idealism to the relations of the feel- 
ings to the self. Consistently enough for the psychological 
idealist himself, but unwarrantably, since psychological ideal- 
ism is based upon a fallacy, it is assumed that the relation of 
feelings to a self which has them can exist only when there is 
consciousness of this relation. But, as a matter of fact, such 
feelings are remembered as my past feelings, although when 
they were actually present I was not explicitly aware of them as 
mine. Moreover, with reference to the evolutionary argument 
for panpsychism and parallelism, as was said in our critique 
of the similar views of C. A. Strong, whose philosophy shows 
the marks of Clifford's influence, if we admit the possibility of 
*' creative evolution," the argument loses most of its weight. 
Clifford's type of psychological idealism is more ingenious than 
most others, but it is no more demonstrative, no less fallacious 
and dogmatic, than those previously examined. 

Karl Pearson holds that ''an external object is in general a 
construct." He does not use this term in quite the Kantian 
sense, however; his affiliations are with the psychological 
idealism of the older English empiricism. He means by " con- 
struct" "si combination of immediate with past or stored sense- 
impressions." 2 Although he distinguishes between the ideal 
and the real, he does not identify the ideal with the unreal. 
The ideal is that which passes into reality when its perceptual 

1 "On the Nature of Things-in-Themselves," Humboldt Library of Science, 
No. 145, pp. 36-7. 

2 The Grammar of Science, 2d ed., 1900, pp. 41, 64, 



PSYCHOLOGICAL IDEALISM 103 

equivalent is found; the unreal can never do so. Physical 
hypotheses as to the nature of matter are not unreal but ideal, 
for they do not lie absolutely outside the field of possible sense- 
impressions. The concepts of the metaphysicians, however, 
among which he includes the " thing-in-itself " of Kant and the 
''mind-stuff" of Clifford, are not ideal, but unreal.^ Even 
physical science is a classification and analysis of the contents of 
the mind.^ The thinker is like the clerk in the central tele- 
phone exchange, who projects outside his office sounds which 
are really inside the office, and speaks of them as the external 
universe.^ According to Pearson, we must remain absolutely 
agnostic as to whether sense-impressions are ^'produced" by un- 
knowable '' things-in-themselves," or whether behind them there 
may not be something of their own nature.^ He thus refrains 
from a dogmatic denial of things-in-themselves ; but all reality of 
which we can ever know that it exists, he would interpret after 
the manner of psychological idealism. His own dogmatism lies 
in his assertion of a subjectivism such as leaves absolutely no 
possibility of knowledge of any reality which might exist in- 
dependently of our own subjective impressions and '' constructs." 
H. R. Marshall advocates the ^'thoroughgoing subjective 
view . . . according to which the outer world and the objects 
within it are complex systematized concepts which are within 
and part of consciousness." ^ He states his "introspective 
monism" in a way that makes it virtually solipsism. "The 
'now' of consciousness," he says, "is all that exists, whether 
of me or of the universe for me." ^ Consciousness contains 
the self and its presentations. The presentations are consti- 
tuted of the ego and its objects, both objects in the outer world 
and activities in the nervous system.'' The objective view is 
convenient but inaccurate; only in the subjective view, 
according to which esse is percipi, have we a true philosophj^ of 
reality.^ Thus the natural world is simply that part of the 
mental order which has "out-thereness."® In Marshall's solip- 
sism we have the logical outcome of psychological idealism; 
but solipsism has been so universally taken as the redudio ad 

1 76., p. 41. 2 lb., p. 52. 3 /&., pp. 61-2. ■» 76., p. 68. 

6 Consciousness, 1909, p. 10. «76., p. 2. ^76., p. 6. 

*Ib., pp. 9-11. 9 See Journal of Philosophy, etc., IX, 1912, p. 106. 



104 THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE 

ahsurdum of any philosophy of which it is the necessary outcome, 
that further comment is needless. 

We shall now turn to a consideration of certain representatives 
of a psychological idealism in which the subject of conscious- 
ness is not represented as the passive recipient of things as 
''impressions" or ''ideas/' but the active creator of objective 
reality within the sphere of the conscious life. In this connec- 
tion we think first of Fichte. In leading up to the distinctive 
doctrines w^hich he was concerned finally to enunciate, Fichte 
commits himself to the most subjective type of psychological 
idealism that can well be imagined. Assuming that what we 
do not perceive immediately, we do not perceive at all, he goes 
on to assert that in all perception we perceive only our own con- 
dition. Strictly speaking, we do not immediately perceive 
external objects; we immediately perceive onty our own per- 
ceiving.^ Instead of saying, then, that the object is red, one 
should say, "I feel myself affected in the manner that I call 
red." 2 We extend our own sensation through space, and caU 
an independent reality what is a product of our own thought.^ 
But neither do we perceive the subject as an independent reahty ; 
our pure rational activity in its original and unchangeable unity 
is beyond possible perception, and it would even seem as though 
intelligence were a mere product of thought.^ But through 
faith that we can have such knowledge as is necessary for the 
fulfilling of our moral vocation,^ we may posit, as indeed we 
also must, both Self and Not-self as valid realities for thought.^ 
The object is dependent for its being upon consciousness of 
the object, just as consciousness in turn is dependent upon 
self -consciousness (consciousness of consciousness).'^ Thus, 
in Fichte's final philosophy, the Ego, or Intelligence, or 
pure rational activity, creates in consciousness the external 
world of experience. It is an imaginative construct of the 
obstacle which is posited to explain the Ego's feeling of limita- 

1 "Die Bestimmung des Menschen," 1800, Fichte's Popular Works, Eng. Tr., 
1889, Vol. I, pp. 357-8. 

2 76., p. 360 ; cf. pp. 368, etc. 3 /^.^ pp. 368, 399. 
4 76., pp. 383-4, 399. & 75.^ p. 411. 

^ Various works on Wissenschaftslehre, passim. 

7 " Zweite Einleitung in die Wissenschaftslehre," 1797, Werke, Vol. I, pp. 458- 
63 ; cf. Kuno Fischer, Geschichte der neuern Philosophie, 3d ed., Vol. VI, p. 308. 



PSYCHOLOGICAL IDEALISM 105 

tion in its activity/ and even to serve as a basis for the activ- 
ity of the ego. ''The infinite activity of the Power ... is 
only for the sake of evidencing, in Intuition, the Being of the 
Will." 2 Thus Fichte's doctrine, although activistic and ab- 
solutistic, remains to the end a type of subjective psychological 
idealism. And in essentials this subjectivism is virtually as- 
sumed at the outset. His analj^sis of experience, as can readily 
be seen, is infected with the fallacy common to the other forms 
of psychological idealism. The activistic interpretation does 
not affect this fallacious basis. 

Another activistic psychological idealist is Alfred Fouillee. 
His idealistic epistemological monism is indicated by his in- 
sistence that psychology has for its object realities, not mere 
reflections of realities.^ Internal and external phenomena are 
held to differ only in that the latter are, through activities of 
sight and touch, spatial,^ and are commonly viewed in abstrac- 
tion from their relation to the subject.^ The physical is an 
aspect of experience; it is inseparable in reality from the 
mental.^ Number, space, and movement are mental, phenom- 
ena, ideas; and psychology covers the whole field of meta- 
physics, in so far as it can be covered at all.^ The dualistic 
opposition of a world of unreal appearances and a world of reality 
which does not appear, is thus repudiated.^ Phenomena are 
simply a part of reality, which reality as a whole is a complete 
(psychological) experience.^ We may not be able to say that 
the Unknowable does not exist, it is admitted ; but, it is claimed, 
neither are we entitled to affirm its existence. The problem is 
merely one which arises when we come to the limit of the ex- 
perience of the subject. ^^ 

But, urges Fouillee, mental phenomena — and all phenomena 

i"Grundlage der gesammelten Wissenschaftslehre," 1794, 2d ed., 1801, 
Werke, Vol. I, pp. 265-70 ; cf. E. L. Schaub, Philosophical Review, XXII, 1913, 
pp. 18, etc. 

2 "Die Wissenschaftslehre in ihrem allgemeinen Umrisse," 1810, Werke, Vol. 
II, pp. 706-9 ; cf. W. Wallace, Prolegomena to HegeVs Logic, p. 133. 

3 La psychologic des idees-forces, 1893, p. xiii. 

4 lb., p. xiv. 

5 lb., pp. xv-xvi ; cf. Uavenir de la metaphysique, 1890, p. 285. 
^ Uavenir, etc., p. 300. 

"^ La psychologic, etc., p. xi; cf. Uavenir, etc., p. 302. 

8 Uavenir, etc., p. 53. » lb., pp. 53-4, 278, lo lb., pp. 281-3. 



106 THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE 

are really mental — are not originally representations, but 
appetitions} Every state of consciousness is idea as including 
discernment, and force as including preference ; moreover, the 
faculty of discernment is only developed with a view to choice. ^ 
All psychical force is therefore ultimately volition,^ and psy- 
chology is essentially the study of the will. Its problem is, 
How does the subject act? ^ According to Fouillee, then, physi- 
cal objects are spatial realities immediately discerned, but 
dependent upon conscious will for their being what they are. 
His philosophy is thus, like Fichte's, an activistic psychological 
idealism. It lacks the Fichtean absolutism, but it retains 
the same fundamental fallacy and consequently the same 
dogmatic subjectivism. 

We now turn to a consideration of some psychological idealists 
who have been strongly influenced by Kant, and who conse- 
quently regard the subject as neither passive nor active, ex- 
clusively, in perception, but both passive and active. We shall 
first speak of Theodor Lipps, whose ''psychologism" is shown 
at once by the fact that he would make psychology the funda- 
mental and indeed the all-inclusive philosophical science. When 
psychology has fulfilled its task, it has done, he declares, the 
work of logic, of aesthetics, of ethics, and of the only accessible 
metaphysics; it deals with validity and with the real as im- 
mediately experienced.^ Indeed, all presentations are objects 
for psychological investigation.^ The non-psychological sciences 
simply show up the law-abiding character of the contents of 
experience, viewing them in abstraction from their relation 
to the ego, or conscious life. Objective and subjective are 
thus simply two aspects of the same process.^ Lipps is at con- 
siderable pains to interpret the apparently non-empirical as 
being what it is in and for the experience of the individual. 
There are substrates — things, self, other selves — in which the 
more immediate objects of sense perception, as well as those of 
inner and social experience, inhere, or to which they belong.^ 
But these are ultimately interpreted, at least in the earlier 

1 La psychologie, etc., p. vii. ^ /^^ p_ x. 3 76. * lb., p. xxvi. 

^ Psychologische Untersuchungen, II, 1, pp. 1-4, 22-7. ^ lb., p. 15. 

7 16., p. 27 ; I, 1, p. 20 ; Leitfaden der Psychologie, 3d ed., 1909, pp. 77, 167. 
^Leitfaden, etc., pp. 171-2, 222. 



PSYCHOLOGICAL IDEALISM 107 

thought of Lipps, as mere possibiHties of conscious experience.^ 
What they are is what they are immediately felt to be, and in 
this process of immediate perception the process of Einfuhlung 
— the reading of one's subjective feelings into the object — 
plays an important part.^ Thinking is regarded as making 
the object — for the thinker, of course — out of the contents 
of immediate feeling experience.^ But this constructing activity 
of thought seems more arbitrary and individual in the system 
of Lipps than in that of Kant. According to the Kantian 
doctrine, thought must work, in universally necessary ways, 
upon a content whose temporal as well as spatial relations 
have already been estabhshed by ''sensibility." According to 
Lipps, however, thought can take a present content of a certain 
sort and make it past by so thinking it ; the past of which we 
think, it is contended, is a part of present experience.^ More- 
over, while for Kant the line between appearance and reality 
is never an arbitrary one, but always definitely fixed, whether 
what one is thinking of is the distinction between phenomenon 
and thing-in-itself, or that between what is not and what is 
conformable to the principles of scientific order, according to the 
philosophy of Lipps, when an earlier content is corrected by a 
later experience or Einfuhlung, it then becomes, for the first time, 
mere appearance ; it may persist in being, after it has been 
corrected, although, of course, as corrected.^ What this means 
is that even what on logical grounds must be rejected as unreal 
must be accepted, in many instances, on psychological grounds 
as real; and there is no way of overcoming the contradiction, 
because no place has been left for any metaphysics but psy- 
chology. This final contradiction is the penalty of the initial 
fallacy to which we have had occasion so frequently to refer. 

Hans Vaihinger has been deeply influenced by Kant, but he 
develops his philosophy along the lines of what we have called 
psychological idealism. He calls his doctrine "idealistic posi- 
tivism." Reality, according to this thinker, is the immediate^ 
given content of experience ; but over against it are to be set 

1 Leitfaden, 1st ed., 1903, pp. 337-8. 

^Leitfaden, 3d ed., pp. 222, 227-38; cf. Psy. Untersuchungen, II, Parts 2 
and 3. 

^ Psy. Untersuchungen, II, 1, pp. 13, 14; cf. Leitfaden, 3d ed., p. 225. 
* Psy. Untersuchungen, I, 1, pp. 43, 47. ^ Leitfaden, p. 236. 



108 THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE 

on the one hand hypotheses, which are mental constructs repre- 
senting a past or a possible future content of experience, and 
capable, therefore, of verification and refutation; and on the 
other hand fictions and half-fictions, which are also mental 
constructs which are either highly convenient or even indis- 
pensable aids to thought and life, in spite of the fact that the 
half-fictions contradict reality (experience), while the fictions 
are not only contradictory of reality, but self-contradictory as 
well.^ Vaihinger's psychologism here makes it necessary for 
him also, like Lipps, to give the He to logic. The only difference 
is that whereas Lipps chose to maintain that what logic has 
excluded as not possibly real is nevertheless real, Vaihinger has 
chosen to defend the doctrine that even thoughts which are 
scientifically as well as practically indispensable, may be mere 
empty concepts, to which no reality corresponds. As a matter 
of fact both ways of defying logic are involved, logically, in the 
original fallacious adoption of the point of view of psychological 
idealism. 

J. H. Poincare's discussions of scientific method are worked 
out on the basis of a neo-Kantian psychological idealism, quite 
similar, fundamentally, to that of Vaihinger, or even of Lipps. 
Like them too he is forced in consequence to confront the prob- 
lem of satisfying the logical demands of scientific thought 
without departure from the principle that reality is to be found 
within the limits of psychologically describable experience. 
His way of dealing with this difficulty is not to discount the 
thought-constructs in favor of the given, as Lipps and Vaihinger 
both do, each in a way of his own ; rather does he discount the 
immediately given in favor of the constructed. External 
objects, he says, in Kantian fashion, are groups of sensations, 
cemented by a constant bond, a relation, which is the object 
itself. These relations, he claims, are all we know of the object ; 
unlike sensations they are transmissible entities, constituted by 
thought. ''All that is not thought is pure nothingness ; since we 
can think only thought . . . to say there is something other than 
thought is therefore an affirmation which can have no mean- 
ing." 2 Like Vaihinger, whose work, although written earlier, 

1 Die Philosophie des Als Ob, 1911, pp. xiv-xvi, 21, 143-54, et passim. 

2 The Value of Science, Eng. Tr., 1907, pp. 138, 142. 



PSYCHOLOGICAL IDEALISM 109 

was later in making its appearance, Poincare distinguishes not 
only between reality, or fact, and hypothesis, but also between 
hypotheses and other mental constructs, which he regards, not 
as indispensable fictions, but, more conservatively, as symbols 
which are convenient, although not necessarily true. For ex- 
ample, he contends that the Euclidean geometry is no truer than 
any other ; it is only more convenient} That Poincare did not 
finally solve the problem is indicated in at least two ways. In 
the first place, this doctrine that two or more mutually contra- 
dictory systems can be equally true is more probably a reductio 
ad absurdum of something in the premises, than the paradoxical 
profundity its author evidently takes it to be. But in addition 
to this, we have to note the apparent movement, in Poincar6's 
later thought, in the realistic direction.^ This movement, if 
maintained, would eventually have undermined some of his 
most characteristic doctrines ; but the mere tendency is signifi- 
cant as marking the felt inadequacy of psychological idealism 
for philosophical construction, even in the hands of so ingenious 
a thinker as Poincar^. 

We shall now examine some typical instances of what we have 
called disguised psychological idealism. Speaking generally, 
it may be said that psychological idealism becomes disguised 
when its doctrine, that objects depend for their existence upon 
their being experienced as objects, is applied to the subject 
as one of the objects. Then, prior to self-consciousness, there 
is no self; experience prior to self-consciousness is ''pure" or 
"neutral" experience, upon their relation to which both subjects 
and objects, both selves and things, depend for their existence. 
Now this homeopathic treatment of subjective or psychological 
idealism leaves it the same thing in disguise. Moreover, this 
disguised psychologism, as we shall see, is a halfway house on 
the way to the new realism. It is itself a transitional form 
of philosophy, a position of unstable equilibrium. If contents, 
as it claims, are independent of any relation to a conscious 
subject, it seems the natural conclusion to infer that they 

1 76., p. 121 ; Science and Hypothesis, Eng. Tr., 1905, pp. 38-9. 

2 Le materialisme actuel, by Poincar6, Bergson, et al., 1913 ; Demises 
pensees, 1913, Ch. VI ; cf. Journal of Philosophy, Vol. IX, 1912, p. 308, and H. C. 
Brown, "The Work of Henri Poincar6," Journal of Philosophy, etc., XI, 1914, 
pp. 231-2. 



110 THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE 

are real independently of their being experienced. This view, 
however, in which the psychological idealism is no longer ap- 
plied to the object, is the position of the new realism, which thus, 
by virtue of the thoroughgoing epistemological monism of the 
two forms of psychological idealism (the undisguised and the 
disguised) from which it has descended, begins as a thorough- 
going realistic epistemological monism. It starts all over 
again from the very beginning ; its doctrine coincides with that 
tacitly assumed by the most uncritical naive realist. But two 
wrongs do not make right. If we were justified in regarding 
the original, undisguised psychological idealism as founded on 
fallacy, then neither pure empiricism nor the new realism can 
be regarded as established simply because the effects of the first 
fallacious process have been covered up by a second similarly 
fallacious step. The only sure way of escaping the evils of psy- 
chologism is to retrace one's steps. To attempt to press on 
through it to some more satisfactory ground is only to render the 
final inevitable retreat all the more difficult. 

Ernst Mach's views may be regarded as transitional between 
an undisguised and a disguised psychologism. His works have 
attracted a good deal of attention as showing the results of the 
attempt of a physicist to express physical facts and theories in 
the terms of psychological idealism. Of the history of his 
thought he tells us that at the age of fifteen he was deeply 
impressed by Kant's Prolegomena, and that two or three years 
later the superfluous r61e of the thing-in-itself dawned upon 
him. Then his ego suddenly appeared to him as ''one coherent 
mass of sensations." He says, ''I had to struggle long and 
hard before I was able to retain the new concepts in my specialty 
(phj^sics). . . . Only by alternate studies in physics and in 
the physiology of the senses . . . have I attained to any con- 
siderable firmness in my views." ^ Thus he came to view 
bodies as complexes of sensations, the abiding existences which 
they seem to have being really nothing but thought-symbols 
for these complexes of sensations. ^ Molecules and atoms are 
regarded, not as realities behind phenomena, but as mere means 
for facilitating our dealing with the facts of the senses.^ So far, 

1 Analysis of Sensations, Eng. Tr., p. 23. 
2/6., p. 22. 3/6., pp. 154, 207. 



PSYCHOLOGICAL IDEALISM 111 

we are on the ground of undisguised psychologism. The follow- 
ing doctrine, however, points to the neutral empiricism which is 
psychologism in disguise. There is no objective distinction, 
he says, between the real and the experienced. "In the sensory 
sphere everything is at once both physical and psychical.'' 
"The apparent opposition . . . lies only in the way of con- 
sidering." ^ What we have here is thus a system of thought 
founded upon the same old fallacy of reasoning from the ego- 
centric-predicament, but shown to be, in spite of the partial 
disguise of its subjective idealism, exceedingly difficult to apply 
in the interpretation of physical facts. 

In the "empiriocriticism" or " philosophy of pure experience" 
of Richard Avenarius^ we have one of the earliest and best illus- 
trations of psychological idealism in disguise. The initial 
assumption is that nothing exists save experience. An appear- 
ance of realism is given to the system by the further assumption 
that the fundamental characteristic of the content of ex- 
perience is space. But the novel result of combining these 
two assumptions might be more appropriately called materialis- 
tic idealism or idealistic materialism than realism. The main 
reliance for the defence of the system is placed in the exposure of 
the "fallacy of introjection" — a falsification of natural ex- 
perience, issuing in the common dualism of the physical and 
the psychical. The process of introjection, as Avenarius de- 
scribes it, is as follows : Since we see that the real objects which 
another observer sees — or thinks he sees — lie outside of his 
body, assuming that what he really sees — his perceptions — 
must lie within him, rather than outside of him, we conclude 
that he perceives, at best, the subjective counterparts of objects, 
not the real external objects themselves. But by analogy we 
must conclude the same thing about our own perceptions. 
Hence dualism, or, as an alternative, subjective idealism, arises. 
Avenarius tries to render consistent what he regards as the 
original natural view, by interpreting the distinction between 
things and thoughts as a distinction due to the one being a 

1 lb., p. 195; 2d German ed. (Analyse der Empfindungen) , 1900, p. 19. 

2 Kritik der reinen Erfahrung, 1888-90 ; Die menschliche Weltbegriff, 1891 ; 
cf. N. K. Smith, "Avenarius's Philosophy of Pure Experience," Mind^ N.S., 
XV, 1906, pp. 13-31, 149-60. 



112 THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE 

first and the other a second experience ; and, further, by reducing 
the distinction between the relative and absolute points of 
view to a distinction between two kinds of the relative point 
of view. But it is easily seen that his whole philosophy rests 
upon the fallacious inference that, since it is only through 
experience that we can know that anything exists, therefore 
''nothing exists save experience." Avenarius is undoubtedly 
justified in taking exception to subjectivism and dualism, and 
to the process of introjection, as he describes it ; but it remains 
to be seen whether the reality of the subject and the distinction 
between the psychical and the physical may not be maintained 
without falling into any of the errors against which he rightly 
enough protests. 

J. Petzoldt, acknowledging the influence of Mach and Avena- 
rius, expresses his own view as follows: '' There is no world in 
itself, but only a world for us. Its elements are not atoms or 
any other absolute existences, but ' sensations ' of color, sound, 
touch, space, time, etc. Still, things are not purely subjective, 
mere appearances in consciousness. On the contrary we must 
think of the constituent parts of our environment, which are 
made up of these elements, as continuing to exist, just as they 
were during perception, even when we no longer perceive tl;iem." ^ 
This retention of a psychological relativism in spite of the ex- 
plicit repudiation of psychological idealism can be understood 
only as an expression of the " philosophy of pure experience,'' 
which, as we have seen, is, notwithstanding all protests, nothing 
but psychological idealism disguised and masquerading in the 
clothes of natural realism.^ 

The disguised psychological idealism of Wilhelm Wundt, 
the intermediate position of which between idealism and reahsm 
is recognized in the designation ''ideal-realism," has not a 
Httle in common with the doctrines of Avenarius. Wundt 
regards the philosophj^ of Avenarius as the only consistent 
materialism, but he himself would avoid that conclusion by in- 
sisting, in Kantian fashion, upon the thought-activity of the ego. 
He differs conspicuously from Kant, however, in holding that 
all the categories have had an empirical origin. 

^Das Wdtjyroblem vom Standpunkte des rdativistischen Positivismus aus, 2d ed., 
1912, pp. V, etc. « See Ch. X, infra. 



PSYCHOLOGICAL IDEALISM 113 

A first examination of Wundt's philosophical system may 
lead to the impression that his planned "ideal-realism" has 
been successfully brought to realization. It may seem that 
without abandoning the fundamental positions of empirical 
idealism he has included in his philosophy the truth of realism. 
He undertakes to retain the view that in experience the object 
is given immediately as a real thing; this reality, he claims, 
remains a part of knowledge, subject to no correction. For 
naive thought, however, according to Wundt, the given is not 
something which is at once subjective presentation and also 
object ; it is only an object with such and such characteristics. 
But, because of contradictions between different perceptions 
of the same object, one is forced to take the qualitative content 
of sensation back into the subject; and yet, Wundt insists, 
this is necessary only for the particular case in which it occurs ; 
it is generalized only by an arbitrary act of thought. Still, 
knowing is thus separated from the object, thinking is recognized 
as subjective activity, and every given object is seen to be given 
in the subject.^ Thus while he agrees with Avenarius in his 
view of the original natural experience, Wundt differs from him 
not only in his description of the process which accounts for 
the consciousness of self, but also in regarding that process as 
valid, at least to the extent of its arriving at knowledge of the 
ego, or cognitively active subject, really involved in all experi- 
ence of the world. 

We must maintain, then, that this apparent realism is simply 
an original psychological idealism, such as we might expect 
would appeal to a structural psychologist like Wundt, but 
elaborately accommodated to the point of view of the non- 
psychological empirical sciences — also quite as might be ex- 
pected of the experimental psychologist. ''The original unity 
of thinking and knowing" is regarded as at the same time "a 
unity of thinking and being." ''Our presentations," he goes 
on to say, "are originally the objects themselves." ^ This 
must not be taken as describing reality apart from its being 
experienced, but the content of experience (treated here as if 
there were no other way in which anything could exist) apart 

1 System der Philosophie, 3d ed., 1907, Vol. I, pp. 78, 128-9, etc. 
« lb., pp. 78-9. 
I 



114 THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE 

from any reflective consciousness. The fallacious dogma of 
psychologism is tacitly assumed, and the supposed escape from 
subjectivism is only formal and apparent. The view that the 
object depends for its existence upon reflective thought is avoided ; 
but no place is found for the reality of things which are not 
dependent for their existence upon their being given in im- 
mediate experience, as well as not being mere products of re- 
flective thought. Finally, then, while predisposed to identify 
the content of a psychologically describable experience with 
objective reahty, Wundt is compelled, nevertheless, out of 
deference to the physical sciences, to admit a real transcendence, 
resting upon the unending character of the progress of thought. 
Even the idea of "possible human experience" proves thus 
inadequate as an ultimate category of reality.^ Wundt's 
epistemological problem, formulated as the problem of pre- 
serving objective reality in spite of the subjective point of view 
introduced through the consciousness of illusion and of those 
non-objective elements of experience which have led to the 
consciousness of consciousness as such, and so to the develop- 
ment of the science of psychology, ^ must be regarded as left by 
him still awaiting a solution. 

The other more or less typical representatives of disguised 
psychological idealism whom we shall mention are EngHsh or 
American philosophers, who are also significant in other connec- 
tions. Of one of these, G. S. Fullerton, it need only be said 
at present that his System of Metaphysics, published in 1904, 
expresses a point of view intermediate between his original 
Berkeleian psychological idealism and his present realistic 
position. It consequently coincides at certain points with the 
covert or disguised psychologism with which we are here con- 
cerned ; but inasmuch as it falls into a certain peculiar abstrac- 
tionism, it will be more profitably discussed as representing a 
variety of abstract idealism. We shall turn, therefore, to a 
brief examination of the views of certain other philosophers, 
being concerned chiefly with S. H. Hodgson, William James, 
and John Dewey, all of whom, like Fullerton, are also significant 

1 System der Philosophie, 3d ed., 1907, Vol. I, pp. 179, 188. 

2 lb., pp. 82, 88, 91, 135 ; cf. Kuelpe, Philosophy of the Present in Germany, 
Eng. Tr., p. 200. 



PSYCHOLOGICAL IDEALISM 115 

in connection with the transition from psychological idealism 
to the new realism. 

Shad worth H. Hodgson would have metaphysics based upon 
a subjective analysis of experience, without presuppositions.^ 
Experience, he insists, cannot be transcended; we cannot 
think of matter as a real condition without first thinking of it 
as a percept. 2 He rejects metaphysical idealism and all other 
forms of trans-empirical metaphysics,^ and even regards the 
idea of the thing-in-itself as not objectively valid, but simply 
'Hhe name for an unrealizable attempt at thinking." ^ Even 
''the bare idea of Being or Existence, as the percipi of a content 
of consciousness, is man's idea; that there is a universe at all 
is a thought of ours" ; and the perception of this truth should 
prevent us, he thinks, from attempting to frame a speculative 
theory of the universe.^ "There is no consciousness which 
does not reveal Being, and no Being which is not revealed in 
consciousness." Even ''unrevealed Being" falls under the 
general notion of consciousness. ^ These quotations suggest 
an undisguised psychological idealism; but when it is re- 
membered that Hodgson regards the subject as an objectifica- 
tion of an abstraction, viz. what is left of present experience 
when we abstract from all present perception of past perceptions 
(objects),^ subject and object are seen to be special develop- 
ments within, and on the basis of, pure experience. But even 
with the aid of this disguise, Hodgson is not, as we have else- 
where intimated, able to realize his ideal of an interpretation 
of aU reality in terms of immediate experience.^ It is con- 
fessed that matter has real conditions beyond all immediate 
human experience, so that in the end there appears the spectre 
of the unknowable thing-in-itself, in spite of the special pains 
taken to drive it away.^ 

1 The Metaphysic of Experience, 1898, Vol. I, p. 18 ; Vol. IV, p. 368. 

2 76., Vol. IV, pp. 263, 275. 3 75.^ pp. 37I-8I, etc. 

*" Method in Philosophy," Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, 1903-04, 
p. 11. 

5 lb., p. 11. 8 The Metaphysic of Experience, Vol. I, p. 6. 

' Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, 1903-4, p. 60 ; The Metaphysic of 
Experience, Vol. I, pp. 4, etc. 

* See Ch. II, supra. 

9 Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Vol. II, No. 1, Part I, 1891-2, p. 24; 
No. 2, Part II, 1892-3, pp. 16, etc. 



116 THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE 

William James says that his ''radical empiricism," according 
to which nothing is to be admitted as a fact except what can 
be experienced at some definite time by some experient/ has 
more affinities with natural realism than with the idealism of 
the English school (Berkeley and Mill).^ The way in which 
this comes about is that in his ''philosophj^ of pure experience" 
all relations are reduced to experienced contents ; ^ and so even 
the relation to the subject or consciousness is also something 
objective. "The peculiarity of our experiences, that they not 
only are, but are known, which their 'conscious' quality is 
invoked to explain, is better explained by their relations — 
these relations themselves being experiences — to one another." ^ 
The separation of pure experience into consciousness and con- 
tent is really adding to a portion of experience in one context 
the same portion of experience in another context.^ Thus con- 
sciousness cannot properly be said to exist as a different sort of 
stuff, or quality of being, from material reahty; it is rather 
to be viewed as a special (cognitive) function of certain ex- 
periential (real) elements, or "a series of experiences run to- 
gether by certain definite transitions," or "a kind of external 
relation" between experiential (real) terms.® 

But it seems difficult to harmonize the statement that all 
reality must be experienced by some experient, whether by one's 
self in the present or future, or by our neighbor, or by itself,^ 
with this doctrine that pure experience is prior to the distinc- 
tion between the mental and the phj^sical. Moreover, James 
says that his view does not preclude the possibility of things 
beyond experience,^ and he distinguishes physical things from 
facts of consciousness by saying that, while the latter exist only 
once, the former are "supposed to be permanent";^ but, on 
the other hand, he not only expresses the opinion that "we 
should be wise not to consider anything of that (extra-experien- 
tial) nature, and to restrict our universe of discourse to what is 

1 Essays in Radical Empiricism, p. 160. 2 75.^ p, 75, 

3 76., p. 185, etc. ; The Meaning of Truth, Preface, pp. xii-xiii; cf. The Will 
to Believe, p. 278 ; A Pluralistic Universe, p. 280. 

* Essays in Radical Empiricism, p. 25 ; cf. pp. 1-38. 

6 lb., p. 9 ; cf. p. 75. 6 lb., pp. 3, 80, 125. 

7 76., pp. 88, 160. 8 76., p. 250 ; cf. The Meaning of Truth, p. xii. 
' Essays in Radical Empiricism, p. 127. 



PSYCHOLOGICAL IDEALISM 117 

experienced, or" — note the convenient ambiguity — "at 
least, experienceahle," ^ but even goes so far as to repudiate the 
idea of "sl transphenomenal principle of energy." ^ Such 
evidently conflicting statements argue a wavering between differ- 
ent points of view, if not downright confusion ; and the explana- 
tion of the acrobatic movements of James's thought undoubtedly 
is that the disguised psychological idealism, or philosophy of 
pure experience, upon which he endeavors to maintain his 
balance, is so unstable a position that he is unable to keep from 
tipping now towards an undisguised psychological idealism, 
and again in the direction of natural, or even scientific, realism. 
According to Dewey's "immediate empiricism," things are 
what they are experienced as ; ^ but he is careful to explain that 
this does not mean that they are nothing but what they are 
known as ; in his view knowing is always mediate, i.e. it is by 
means of ideas, which are instruments for the reconstruction 
of the experienced environment. Perceptions are selected 
elements of experience ; perception is constituted by the func- 
tional transformation of the experienced environment under 
conditions of uncertain action (and so of subjectivity, con- 
sciousness) into conditions for determining an appropriate 
organic response (i.e. into conditions of objective experience, or 
reality, again) by means of the judgment, or knowing process, 
the reconstructive act of cognitive consciousness. Thus know- 
ing makes a change in things, and the changed reality is what 
it is experienced as, after the knowing has been accomplished.'^ 
In other words, the environment is pre-perceptual experience 
(or, what is taken to be the same thing, its contents). When 
the conditions for favorable organic response do not obtain, 
experience is thrown into subjectivity; it becomes conscious; 
ideas are constructed and employed in tentative judgments. 
When the practically satisfactory idea is found, the judgment 
in which it is predicated is an act of knowledge, reconstructing 
certain elements of experience (or the environment) into an 

1 Quoted by J. Dewey, New York Times, June 9, 1912. 

2 Essays in Radical Empiricism, pp. 184-5, note 2. 

3 Influence of Darwin on Philosophy, 1910, pp. 226 ff, 

^Journal of Philosophy, VI, 1909, p. 19; VIII, 1911, pp. 396-7; IX, 1912, 
p. 659; "Does Reality Possess Practical Character?" in Essays . . . in Honor 
of William James, 1908, pp. 51-80; Studies in Logical Theory, 1903, pp. 23-85. 



118 THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE 

object, or a reality, a perceptual experience or perception, 
selected, in the manner thus described, from the formerly pre- 
perceptual experience, or environment. The fact that the 
object is said to be constituted only in small part by its being 
known, seems to differentiate Dewey's doctrine from idealism ; 
but that this is really only a disguise becomes evident when it is 
noticed that for the common realistic distinctions of reality, 
experience and judging, Dewey has substituted the idealistic 
terms, experience, consciousness, and knowing. In other words, 
no cognitive consciousness is recognized except that in which 
the judgment is present as an explicit act of predication; no 
conscious experience is recognized except the experience in 
which contents of experience are explicitly subjective, as my 
sensations, my feelings, and my ideas ; and no environment is 
recognized except what is immediately experienced, as if the 
past and the absent could have no reality but what they have 
as immediately experienced. Further exposition and criticism 
of Dewey's view may be deferred until we come to discuss the 
antecedents of the new realism ; ^ but from what has been said 
it ought to be clear that his system is properly classified as 
disguised psychological idealism. 

G. H. Mead, following Dewey, undertakes to define the 
psychical as a phase of experience. The objective is that 
content of experience with reference to which we can act ; the 
subjective is that with reference to which we cannot, or may not, 
or should not act. Moreover, it is that which is identified 
with the consciousness of the individual, as individual.^ In 
the unreflective stage the entire content of consciousness is 
subjective and objective at once.^ The psychical element is 
unessential, because purely individual.^ Not all reality is 
psychical, inasmuch as it would be a mistake to introject, as 
purely individual, a content with reference to which one was 
ready to act.^ Here we have a disguised psychological idealism, 
evidently developed in the usual way, by applying psychological 
idealism to the subject as object, but in the specific way ex- 

1 Ch. X, infra. 

2 "The Definition of the Psychical," University of Chicago Decennial Publi- 
cations, Vol. Ill, p. 3. 

' /6., p. 20, * /6., p. 21. 6 /&., p. 28. 



PSYCHOLOGICAL IDEALISM 119 

emplified by Dewey, viz. by taking the term "conscious" as 
applicable only to such experience as is explicitly self-conscious. 
With this is combined the tendency to interpret the objective 
as that which has place in social, as opposed to individual, or 
conscious, experience. 

A. W. Moore emphasizes this last point also. In repelling 
the charge of solipsism and subjectivism he appeals not to an 
independent physical world, but to a social situation, the 
individual consciousness being interpreted as an organic func- 
tion of the social world. ^ He thus gives further basis for the 
charge that his pragmatist doctrine of matter is in accord with 
a not very well-disguised psychological idealism. For individual 
solipsism he substitutes a social solipsism. 

H. H. Bawden, another disciple of Dewey, has set forth 
in his Principles of Pragmatism the "experience philosophy,'^ 
without making some of the distinctions recently emphasized 
by Dewey himself, and without the emphasis placed by Mead 
and Moore upon social tests. He uses the term " experience " as 
meaning the totality of things for a person's consciousness, 
the universe from an individual point of view.^ "There can 
be no sense," he declares, "in speaking of reality beyond or 
outside of experience, since this very judgment of transcendence 
or externality itself constitutes the relation which it sustains to 
experience." This remark, which is, in effect, that to judge a 
thing to be beyond experience is to bring it within experience, 
is a particularly fine instance of the fallacy of reasoning from 
the "egocentric predicament." "Reality," it is concluded, 
"is what is experienced — whether actually or ideally, whether 
as fact or as possibility."^ "To-be and to-be-experienced 
come to the same thing. Things are what they are experienced 
as.^^ 4 ''There is but one reality : the content of experience." ^ 

The only thing that saves this view from explicit solipsism 
is the interpretation of consciousness in such a way as to dis- 
guise — albeit but slightly — the psychological ideahsm of the 
fundamental position. Consciousness is described as "a cer- 
tain kind of adjustment which takes place between two portions 

1 Pragmatism and Its Critics, 1910, pp. 220-1. 

2 y/ie Principles of Pragmatism, 1910, p. 52. 

3 lb., p. 53. * lb., p. 55. e 75.^ p. 55. 



120 THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE 

of the universe^ ^ ;^ it is "the growing point of experience." ^ 
"Sensation, and image are merely functional phases of that 
intellectual reconstruction of experience which we call knowl- 
edge." ^ "Knowledge is not a process of representing or refer- 
ring to a reality beyond the act of knowledge ; it is a process 
going on within the object. . . . Knowledge is the totality of 
the object or situation undergoing reconstruction." ^ In this 
view, which Bawden calls pragmatic or functional ideahsm,^ 
there can be objectivity "only in a functional sense." ^ That 
part of my experience alone is objective which is brought clearly 
to consciousness in knowledge, and which serves as an instru- 
ment to control another part.^ "The doctrine of an indepen- 
dent and external reality must be given up." ^ It will not do for 
pragmatists to complain that charges of sohpsism against this 
type of pragmatic idealism are altogether unfair. 

Mystical-Psychological Idealism 

We shall now consider a second of the dual combinations of 
elemental types of ideahsm, viz. mystical-psychological ideahsm, 
of which the philosophy of Henri Bergson will afford us our best 
available illustration. We do not say that, in its final form, 
Bergson's doctrine is an unambiguous instance of idealism ; but 
what we do insist is that his final position has come to be what 
it is only through the use of certain ideahstic presuppositions 
and suggestions. His philosophical method is a psychologi- 
cally oriented empiricism, pushed to the mystical extreme. 
He would find reality in experience in its most radical immediacy. 
An immediate vision of reality — this, which the mystics 
claimed, Bergson would make the only true method for the 
metaphysician.^ Negatively, the method may be regarded 
as the resolute elimination from philosophy of all traces of 
logical idealism. All conceptual construction must be tran- 
scended if one would grasp, in immediate intuition, the ultimate 
nature of reality. Thought does not reveal the absolute ; but 

^ The Principles of Pragmatism, 1910, p. 96 ; italics mine. 
2 lb., p. 104. 3 76.^ p. 163. 4 Ih., p. 165. ^ 75.^ p. 261. 

« lb., p. 255. 7 7^,.^ p. 257. » 76., p. 255. 

5 See Introduction A la metaphysique, in Revue de metaphysique et de morale, 
January, 1903, and Eng. Tr., 1912, passim. 



PSYCHOLOGICAL IDEALISM 121 

rather falsifies and hides it. Intuition, on the contrary, is ^' that 
art of intellectual sympathy" which transcends concepts, and 
by which ''one transports oneself into the interior of an object 
in order to become harmonious with what is peculiar to it alone, 
and so, inexpressible." Indeed the intuitive penetration of the 
object is described as inserting one's self into the object's "states 
of mind" (etats dfame), the being identified (coincider) ^ for 
the time being, with the other.^ In so far as it succeeds it is, 
in a sense, as the mystic has always claimed, "superhuman." ^ 
Before proceeding farther it may be pointed out that Bergson 
already, in his explanation of the nature of his method, betrays 
the fact that he tacitly assumes, evidently in the usual fallacious 
way, the idealistic interpretation of things, which one commonly 
finds among the mystics, and which is the essential feature of 
psychologism. In immediate experience of anything one does 
not necessarily enter into it, so as to become part of it (as mysti- 
cism assumes), or so as to have it become part of one's own 
consciousness (as psychologism would have it) ; but one or the 
other, at least, is involved in Bergson' s descriptions of intuition. 
Just how mystical idealism and psychological idealism are 
separately fallacious has already been shown ; and there is no 
reason to suppose that two fallacious suggestions, when reen- 
forcing each other, are able to render each other innocuous and 
logically sound. 

The traces of this fallacious idealistic assumption are dis- 
coverable as a confusing factor throughout the various works 
of this remarkable philosopher. What is revealed most obvi- 
ously by intuitive apprehension is the fact of duration.^ But 
this is interpreted as an actual persistence of the past in the 
present.^ This tendency to regard the persisting memory of 
the past as the actual presence of the past can be understood 
only if one remembers that in psychological ideaUsm it is 

^ lb., translation by Luce, pp. 3-6, 10; see also pp. 66, 81-2, 86-7; cf. 
translation by Hulme, pp. 1-3, 7 ; also pp. 55-6, 69, 74. 

2/6. (Luce), p. 90; (Hulme), p. 77. 

' Essai sur les donnees immediates de la conscience, 1889, Eng. Tr., Time and 
Free Will, 1910, Ch. II. 

* lb., Eng. Tr., pp. 100, 101, 107, 110, etc. ; cf. La perception du changement, 
1911, p. 30; cf. W. E. Hocking, "The Significance of Bergson," Yale Review, 
N.S., III, 1914, p. 313. 



122 THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE 

assumed that the "immediate data of consciousness" are at 
once parts of the consciousness and the only possible species 
of reality. The common mystical misinterpretation of the 
lapse, in the mystical state, of ordinary consciousness of time, 
as being an actual transcendence of temporal succession, may 
also have had some influence here. It is a particular instance 
of the idealistic assumption that to lapse from being object of 
consciousness is to lapse from being real. 

But it is especially with Bergson's idealistic interpretation of 
matter that we are here concerned. In order to learn the real 
nature of matter, we must eliminate entirely the apperceptive or 
memory element in perception, leaving only "pure perception" 
as an intuition of present reality, or matter.^ It is forthwith 
assumed that this pure perception is matter, which is simply 
more of the same.^ The psychological idealism in this is un- 
mistakable. Even the psychological term "images" is used 
to describe the nature of matter as thus intuitively perceived.^ 
But, it may be objected, Bergson himself denies the idealism, 
claiming that matter, or pure perception, this aggregate of 
images, is more than the idealist calls a representation as well as 
less than the reaUst calls a thing.^ But this is because Bergson's 
psychological ideahsm is of the "disguised" variety. It is 
significant that he claims to find nothing in his own works 
incompatible with the radical empiricism of James.^ In his 
view it is memory alone which lends to perception its sub- 
jectivity ; ^ so that when, as in pure perception, one transcends 
memory, the resulting consciousness would be no longer sub- 
jective. Matter, the content of pure perception, is not, to be 
sure, a construct of intellect in Bergson's system; there is 
nothing of logical idealism in the Bergsonian philosophy of 
ultimate reality. Nevertheless matter, as immediately known 
and identified with that content of pure experience in which 
the subject is apparently lost (as in mystical absorption), is 
necessarily held to be a "kind of consciousness."^ It is "a 
totality of images," ^ "an uninterrupted series of instantaneous 

^ Matihre et memoire, 1896; Eng. Tr., 1911, pp. 26, 64, 68, 77, 80, 84-5. 

2 76., p. 78. 3 jjj^ Preface, pp. vii, viii. 

*Ib.; cf. Introduction, etc. (Luce), p. 33; (Hulme), pp. 27-8. 

5 Journal of Philosophy, VII, 1910, p. 388. 

• Matter and Memory, p. 80. ' lb., p. 313. * lb. 



PSYCHOLOGICAL IDEALISM 123 

visions," which visions are *'a part of things rather than of 
ourselves." ^ Bergson has exphcitly repudiated the idea that 
Hfe transcends experience, or that absolute reality is beyond 
the most searching experience. ''Life," he says, "transcends 
intelligence, but not experience; and it apprehends itself ab- 
solutely in an intuition which, though actually incomplete, can 
go on completing itself indefinitely." ^ This double doctrine 
of consciousness, as identified first with subjective consciousness 
and then with the immediate data of non-subjective experience, 
is symptomatic of disguised psychological idealism, and accounts 
at the same time for the elusive character of Bergson's funda- 
mental metaphysical intuition. 

In fact, there are in Bergson's doctrine at least ^2;e clearly dis- 
tinguishable applications of the term '' consciousness," some of 
which do not seem to be altogether compatible with each other. 
To begin at the upper limit, there is that presumably "super- 
human" consciousness, fleeting glimpses of which are not 
altogether unattainable by man, viz. intuition.^ Then there is 
the characteristically human form of consciousness, intelligence. 
This was originally developed in connection with the process of 
adjusting the developing life to its material environment, and 
bears conspicuous marks of its early history. It found in the 
spatial form a convenient symbol of the material reality about 
it, and so constructed the world of spatial objects out of the 
immediate data of consciousness. In this it was well within 
its rights ; but it is incapable of dealing satisfactorily with life, 
which it inevitably tends to interpret mechanically, i.e. spa- 
tially.^ Here, it will be noted, we find an idealistic and approxi- 
mately Kantian interpretation of the physical object as it is 
for intelligence. But the most characteristic form of animal 
consciousness is instinct, which reaches its highest development 
in the Arthropods, and which is not to be viewed as unconscious 
because it is not, in the ordinary sense of the term, intelligent.^ 
But Bergson speaks of consciousness as coterminous with life, 

1 76., p. 69. 2 Journal of Philosophy, VII, 1910, p. 388. 

^Introduction, etc., passim; Uevolution creatrice, Eng. Tr., 1911, pp. 360-1, 
etc. 

* Introduction, passim; Creative Evolution, pp. 135-65, 186-90, 202, 206, 208, 
et passim; Hocking, Yale Review, N.S., III, p. 315. 

^Creative Evolution, pp. 135-51, 165-76, etc. 



124 THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE 

and so opposes it to inert matter. In fact, life is defined as 
consciousness using matter for its purposes. Consequently 
it is found necessary to explain that in the vegetable world life 
or consciousness is in a state of torpor ; it has become drowsy, 
as it were, having renounced movement, and devoted itself 
to the preparation of the explosive substances employed by 
animals to enable them to utilize matter in their movements.^ 
But even matter itself, as we have seen, is interpreted as ^'a 
kind of consciousness." What Bergson seems to mean here is 
that even inert matter is consciousness with but a minimum of 
duration or memory, which can only be known by a supreme 
effort of intuition, whereby the knower ''enters into" the object, 
so as to share its being or its being consciously perceived. It is 
not that, in all forms of consciousness, the reality of which there 
is awareness is dependent on that consciousness, but that, 
ultimately, it would seem, reality as life can only be interpreted 
as consciousness; it is inwardly felt duration. Inert matter, 
then, is the same thing as life, only its movement is in the 
opposite direction; it is life, or consciousness, ''unmaking 
itself." 2 Perhaps what Bergson means is that inert matter is 
life with but a minimum of Velan vital, so that it acts as a drag 
upon the central life and movement, and even seems to be 
moving in the opposite direction. In any case, in this mul- 
tiple signification of the term "consciousness," especially in 
its application to vegetable torpor and even to inert matter 
(not to dwell upon the more doubtful case of instinct), we 
have evidence of Bergson' s determination to abide by the 
consequences of his original tacit assumption of psychological 
idealism, an assumption that was none the less fallacious 
for its being disguised and propped up by means of certain 
concordant but equally fallacious mystical suggestions.^ 

^Creative Evolution, pp. 109, 111, 113-14, 128-35, 181; "Life and Con- 
sciousness," Hibbert Journal, X, 1911-12, pp. 24-44. 

2 Creative Evolution, pp. 245-51 ; Hibbert Journal, X, p. 37. 

3 If this interpretation should have to be given up, the only plausible alterna- 
tive left would seem to be that in the interval between the publication of Matiere 
et memoire and the writing of devolution creatrice Bergson's thought suffered 
fundamental modification — and this, it is understood, he is himself unwilling to 
acknowledge — so that, while the view of formed nature remains quasi-idealistic, 
the marks of idealism, so far as concerns the doctrine of inert matter, would 
have to be said to have at length disappeared. 



PSYCHOLOGICAL IDEALISM 125 

Still another indication of the underlying psychological 
idealism is found in the doctrine which Bergson has recently 
stated as follows : ''There are changes, but there are no things 
which change ; the change has no need of a support. There are 
movements, but there are not necessarily invariable objects 
which move ; movement does not imply a thing moving." ^ 
Here again we have simply a peculiarly rigorous application 
of the assumption of psychologism, that reality is nothing but 
the immediate data of consciousness.^ 

1 La perception du changement, p. 24. 

2 Incidentally, it may be remarked that Bergson's confessed uncertainty with 
reference to the religious implications of his system is probably due in no small 
part to his interpretation of "creative evolution" in a similar psychologistic 
and non-substantial sense. He asserts creation, but fails to interpret it as an 
activity of which there is any subject. His creative evolution is not evolution 
as the result of creative activity, but simply evolution as if it were the result 
of creative activity. In the last analysis — or the last intuition, rather — it is 
nothing but a real becoming among appearances than which there is nothing 
more real. 



CHAPTER VII 

The Older Absolute Idealism 

Logical-Psychological Idealism 

We spoke of psychological idealism as the most modern of 
the elemental types of idealism ; but the most typical idealism 
of the nineteenth century at least is not that which is developed 
under the immediate influence of the suggestions arising from 
the psychological view of experience; rather is it a device 
which has commended itself as affording a way of escape from 
the subjectivism which besets that psychological idealism. As 
soon as the human mind has passed from the natural realism 
of ordinary consciousness to the subjective idealism suggested 
by the psychological point of view, it is confronted — through 
a confusion of thought, as we have seen — with the problem 
as to how, where everything known is one's own idea, any 
knowledge of genuinely objective reality is possible. From 
this point of view the only possible solution of the problem 
seems to be found in an identity — if it can be maintained — 
between objective reality and the rational idea at which one 
arrives through the dialectical process. Reality, it is still 
assumed, as in psychological idealism, is constituted of contents, 
constituent elements, of consciousness ; but, since subjectivism 
is to be avoided, some way must be found of distinguishing 
between reality and those contents of consciousness which are 
mere subjective appearance. Assuming psychological idealism 
to be vahd as far as it goes, then it would seem to be only on 
condition of objective reality being regarded as constituted 
of the logical within the psychological, the universally acceptable 
within the contents of consciousness, that knowledge of objective 
reality can be said to be humanly possible. 

In this, the nineteenth century's most characteristic form 
of ideaUsm, whose earhest undoubted representative, as well 

126 



THE OLDER ABSOLUTE IDEALISM 127 

as the most eminent and influential, was Hegel, we have a 
return to logical idealism as a way of escape from the subjec- 
tivism of psychological idealism, without giving up the essen- 
tials of the latter position. Being thus a synthesis of two of the 
elemental types of idealism, the logical and the psychological, 
it may be appropriately called logical-psychological idealism. 
As finding reality in what is not mere private feeling, but in 
that which, while made up of particular experiences, is shot 
through and through with universally acceptable and even 
necessary ideas, it claims to be objective, rather than merely 
subjective. In its simplest form this ''objective idealism" is 
the conclusion that the thesis that we know objective reality 
which is there for every one, and the opposing thesis that we 
can never know anything but ideas, contents, and parts of 
consciousness, cannot both be true unless reality is made up of 
universally acceptable ideas. It has thus grown up as a solu- 
tion of the problem of the possibility of knowledge of objective 
reality, proposed by and for those who cannot see their way 
clear to give up psychological idealism. 

It ought to be readily recognized that what we have here is 
mere dogma, rather than a vaHd and conclusive argument. 
As a synthesis of logical and psychological idealism, it is still 
vitiated by the already exposed fallacies underlying those two 
elemental forms of idealism. It is well to remember that there 
may be an abuse as well as a proper use of dialectic. At its 
best the dialectical process is a part of empirical analysis. 
Even when both of the antithetical judgments are inductions 
well supported by experience, unless it is certain that the 
synthesizing judgment exhausts all the possibilities in the case, 
it should be regarded as in some degree still hypothetical until 
it has been empirically verified. Any other use of the dialec- 
tical method is dogmatic. But when both of the propositions 
to be harmonized are dogmas resting upon fallacious reasoning, 
it seems the height of dogmatism to set forth the synthesis 
as necessarily true. The procedure in such a dialectical process 
is exactly parallel logically, if not morally, to the telling of 
one lie to support another. Such, we would claim, is the basis 
of logical-psychological idealism. It is a more than dubious 
solution of the entirely unnecessary problem of how to avoid 



128 THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE 

scepticism, when one has made such a mistake in analysis as 
makes scepticism logically inevitable. 

If, however, there should be doubt as to whether modern 
objective idealism was really designed to extricate the modern 
philosopher from subjectivism, especially in view of the fact 
that Hegel starts directly with the concept of being, without 
any preliminary epistemological inquiry, it will be sufficient to 
recall that the German idealistic movement from Kant to 
Hegel is to be regarded as the working out of a way of escape 
from the Humian sceptical psychologism. Indeed the state- 
ment may be ventured that no modern idealism, however 
much it may wish to disown its subjectivistic ancestry, can 
justly deny the fact of that relationship. As a matter of fact, 
subjectivism constitutes no small part of the stock-in-trade 
of the typical modern ideahst; he would find it hard to do 
business without it. 

Before proceeding further with our criticism it will be well 
to indicate something of the relation of objective idealism and 
logical-psychological ideahsm, in their chief varieties, to each 
other. Most forms of objective idealism are logical-psycho- 
logical. Objective idealism may be concrete or abstract. By 
concrete idealism is meant the doctrine that reality is, in some 
sense of the word, idea, actually present in some experience. 
By abstract idealism is meant the doctrine that reality is, in 
some sense of the word, idea, but so stated that the reality is 
not, or cannot be held to be, all actually present in individual 
experiences. In one of its forms, as we shall see, abstract 
idealism ceases to be logical-psychological, and becomes simply 
logical ; it is objective without being subjective. Concrete 
idealism may be metaphysically monistic (singularistic), hold- 
ing that all reality is essentially idea, present in one all-inclusive 
experience; or pluralistic, holding that reality, as idea, is 
distributed among many mutually exclusive and ultimately 
real experiences. The monistic form of concrete objective 
idealism is usually called '' absolute idealism"; while the plu- 
ralistic form is often called '^ personal idealism." In some of its 
forms personal idealism ceases, as we shall see, to be logical- 
psychological, and becomes simply psychological ; it comes to 
be, from the point of view of the many selves, considered 



THE OLDER ABSOLUTE IDEALISM 129 

together, no longer objective, but subjective only. Absolute 
idealism, on the other hand, hke concrete logical-psychological 
ideahsm everywhere, is not only objective, but, in a sense, 
subjective also. Its objectivity it gets from logical idealism. 
Its subjectivity — the doctrine that the object can exist only 
for a subject — holds with reference to the one Absolute Self 
(in singularism), or with reference to the many finite selves (in 
pluralism), but not with reference to the single finite self, 
for that would be soUpsism; and this subjectivity absolute 
idealism, like the others, gets from psychological idealism. 
Finally, then, logical-psychological idealism includes, as we 
shall see more fully in the sequel, all, or very nearly all, forms of 
monistic concrete idealism, and several varieties both of abstract 
idealism and of pluralistic concrete idealism. 

We shall first consider absolute idealism, or concrete logical- 
psychological idealism, in its monistic (singularistic) form. This 
monistic form differs genetically from the pluralistic in that the 
subjectivism with which logical idealism is united is of the 
solipsistic type. It is evolved as the final synthesis in a dialec- 
tical process, as follows : First thesis: I know objective reality. 
First antithesis: I know only my own ideas. First synthesis, 
becoming second thesis : Reality is constituted of my own ideas. 
Second antithesis : As a finite knower I do not know all reality. 
Second synthesis: It is only my finite self whose knowledge of 
reality is limited ; my true or absolute self must know all my 
own ideas, and so objective reality is to be thought of as the 
complete system of the ideas of my true or Absolute Self. The 
process may be continued as follows : Third thesis : the second 
synthesis just stated. Third antithesis: There are other finite 
selves, of whose ideas reality is composed. Third synthesis, or 
fourth thesis : It is not the finite self of these individuals of whose 
ideas reality is exclusively composed, but the true or Absolute 
Self. Fourth antithesis: There is but one objective reality of 
which the different finite selves have ideas. Fourth synthesis: 
The true self of all such individuals must be one and the same 
Absolute Self. In this dialectic the one initial error which 
vitiates each succeeding synthesis is the first antithesis, the 
dogma of psychological idealism, that I know only my own ideas. 

The logical idealism is explicitly introduced into this abso- 



130 THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE 

lute idealism by a process of thought which may be thrown 
into overtly dialectical form, as follows : Thesis : I know 
objective reality. Antithesis: I am finite, and only the ideas 
of the Absolute Self are absolute ideas. Synthesis: Reality is 
the adequate logical idea, and adequately criticised or rational 
logical ideas are the ideas of the Absolute Self, so that in so 
far as I interpret my experience by means of such ideas, the 
Absolute Self interprets my experience in me. 

But while this is the latent dialectic underlying absolute 
idealism, that system of philosophy is generally based explicitly 
upon special arguments in which the above dialectic is either 
obscured or transcended. In this proposed basis there may be 
an emphasis in a one-sided and exclusive way upon rational 
thought-processes; or there may be added an emphasis upon 
purpose and will; or, finally, feeling, and especially religious 
feeling, may receive special emphasis. We would thus have 
three main types of absolute idealism, viz. intellectualistic 
absolute idealism, in which the Absolute Idea (with which it is 
maintained Absolute Reality is identical) is regarded as dis- 
coverable through critical intellectual processes; voluntaristic 
absolute idealism, in which the Absolute Idea is regarded as 
determined by purpose; and mystical absolute idealism, in 
which the Absolute Idea is regarded as being immediately 
experienced through feeling. We shall therefore consider 
absolute idealism in these its three principal types. But there 
is another triple division of absolute idealism which is also of 
great importance. After the original constructive movement in 
its intellectualistic and voluntaristic forms we must consider 
the destructive movement within absolute idealism, as represented 
by F. H. Bradley, and, finally, the attempts at reconstruction, 
intellectualistic, voluntaristic, and mystical. In the present 
chapter we shall deal with the original construction and with 
the destructive movement. 

Hegel's own philosophy, although of prime importance here, 
has been so often exhaustively expounded and discussed that it 
need not detain us long. The fundamental doctrine is that the 
real is the rational, not in the sense of mere logical idealism 
(with its identification of reality with the absolute idea as the 
abstract universal), but in the sense that, if being is interpreted, 



THE OLDER ABSOLUTE IDEALISM 131 

after the manner of psychological ideahsm, in terms of con- 
sciousness, it is further determined by the principle that the 
real is the rational within the psychical, the universal {i.e. the 
universally accessible, or public) within the particular facts of 
any individual consciousness, the objective within the subjective 
— in other words, the concrete universal. Absolute Reality, in 
which all that is real must be included, is an absolutely rational 
system, in which all particulars of conscious experience are 
included. Hegel is commonly interpreted as intending to 
teach a monistic metaphysic.^ The criticisms we would be 
concerned to urge against this doctrine have already been 
indicated in the preceding paragraphs of the present chapter. 

After the philosophy of Hegel himself, the older EngUsh 
and American Hegelianism may be taken as affording perhaps 
the best available example of what we have called intellectual- 
istic absolute ideahsm. J. Hutchinson Stirhng and William 
Wallace in Britain and W. T. Harris in America confined their 
efforts for the most part to an exposition and defence of the 
Hegelian system, with little or no conscious deviation from the 
doctrine of the master. Wallace, speaking for Hegel and for 
himself, maintains that knowledge begins in the immediacy 
of sense-perception, which is a felt totality (or totality of feel- 
ings) ; its further task is to raise this to an intelligible totality 
(or totahty of intelligently ordered thoughts). It is here 
assumed that the contrast of subjective and objective is simply 
that between the earher stage of immediate feehng and the 
later one of the constructs of thought. Neither the contrast 
between feelings and that which is felt, nor that between thoughts 
and what is thought of, is treated as anything more than an 
essentially verbal distinction; '4deal-realism" or ''real-ideal- 
ism," the ''idealism of nature," and the "realism of mind" are 
the cardinal points of Hegelian doctrine.^ 

Let us see what we have here, and what it presupposes and 

^See "Phanomenologie des Geistes," Werke, 1832, Vol. II, pp. 73-84, 131- 
40; "Die Wissenschaft der Logik, II, Die Subjektive Logik," Werke, Vol. V, 
pp. 230-5 ; " Encyclopadie der philosophischen Wissenschaften, I, Die Logik," 
Werke, Vol. VI, pp. 320-21, 385; "Encyclopadie, III, Die Philosophic des 
Geistes," Werke, Vol. VII, Part II, p. 283 (cf. Royce, The Spirit of Modern 
Philosophy, p. 208, note 2), 307 ff. 

2 W. Wallace, Prolegomena to HegeVs Logic, pp. 190-3, 303. 



132 THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE 

implies. At first it would seem as though there had been simply 
a reversal of the point of view of common sense; the object 
immediately experienced being taken as subjective, and the 
ideas or thought-constructs of the subject as objective. But at 
any rate for the object as merely sensed there has been sub- 
stituted the sense-qualities, and these are interpreted, after 
the fallacious manner of psychological idealism, as being mere 
sensations, feelings, modes of the consciousness of a particular 
subject. On the other hand thought-constructs, when the 
thinking has been sufficiently critical, seem less private than 
sensations and feelings; they are in a sense transferable, 
universally usable, in that the words used in communication 
directly express these thought-constructs, and only more 
remotely the sensations and feelings. The thought-constructs 
are more universally accessible than the feelings. Accordingly, 
after the fallacious manner of logical idealism, but also in 
default of anything less dependent upon the particular subject, 
since psychological idealism is assumed, this imiversality of 
rational thought is interpreted as being itself the essence of 
objectivity. The thought-construct, or '^ universal," however, 
is not taken abstractly, but (theoretically) in all its relations, 
so as to include, especially, its relation to the particulars of 
sense ; it is a universal in the particular, the "concrete notion " 
or "concrete universal" which Stirling rightly speaks of as "the 
secret of Hegel." ^ It is involved in this view that to think of 
the objects of sense-perception as capable of existing either 
wholly or in part, independently of the relation to the immediate 
data of the consciousness of a subject, is to take an abstraction 
as a reality. Of course, it is true, as Stirling points out,^ that 
this doctrine of the ''concrete universal" may be regarded as 
having been ''implicit" in the Kantian view that the under- 
standing constructs nature out of the immediate data of sensi- 
tive consciousness ; but when one reflects that it is not nature, 
but at most our mental instruments for the perceiving and 
understanding of nature that the human mind constructs, it is 
seen that in referring back to the Kantian doctrine we have 
simply traced the confusion and dogmatism back to a point 
nearer its beginnings. Going still further back, we should find 

1 The Secret of Hegel, 1865, Vol. I, pp. xi, Ixix. « lb., p. xi. 



THE OLDER ABSOLUTE IDEALISM 133 

behind Kant on the one hand the sceptical empirical idealism 
of Hume, and beyond Hume the dogmatic subjective idealism 
of Berkeley, and on the other hand the equally — if not so 
obviously — fallacious logical idealism of Plato. 

The argument upon which the intellectualistic absolute 
idealists generally seem to depend most is that which, first 
assuming that the real is intelligible, and that the intelligible 
is rational, concludes first that the real is rational, and then, 
on the assumption that the rational is mental, spiritual, con- 
cludes further that the real is mental, spiritual. Edward Caird, 
in his exposition of Hegel's philosophy, expresses the argument 
in condensed form as follows : ''To express all in a word, 'the 
real is the rational or intelligible, ' i.e. it is that which is capable 
of being thoroughly understood by the intelligence, just because 
it has in it the essential nature of the intelligence, or self-con- 
sciousness." 1 This argument has the appearance of logical 
validity ; but when we examine the assumptions, we find them 
highly dogmatic. So far from being justified in concluding, 
since universal agnosticism is self -refuting, and since all thought 
practically assumes the possibility of knowledge, that therefore 
all reality is intelligible, we are warranted only in saying that 
some reality is intelligible. The disproof of a universal negative 
is no proof of a universal, but only of a particular affirmative. 
The other assumptions, that the intelligible is rational and that 
the rational is mental, or spiritual, are capable of being used as 
in the above argument only because of the ambiguity of the 
te^-m "rational." This term may mean "mental" in the sense 
of that phase of the mental which is constituted by the fixed 
and universal forms of thought, but it may also mean that in 
the objective realm which corresponds to this phase of the 
mental. This ambiguity it is which gives the appearance of 
logical validity to the latter of the two syllogisms under con- 
sideration. The sense in which rationality may be predicated 
of whatever is intelligible is not the same as that in which it 
may be predicated that it is in every case mental. In one way 
or another, then, the second syllogism is fallacious : either 

^ Hegel (Blackwood's Philosophical Classics), p. 176; cf. John Watson, 
The Interpretation of Religious Experience, 1912, Vol. I, pp. 74-7 ; Vol. II, 
pp. 38, 60, 104. 



134 THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE 

^'rational" means the same thing in both premises, in which 
case at least one of them is clearly an unsupported dogma; or 
else the term has different meanings in the two premises, in 
which case the conclusion depends upon the fallacy of "four 
terms." All that we are really justified in concluding is that 
some reality is perhaps mental, which is less than we knew with- 
out the argument. 

There are some individual variations among the representa- 
tives of this philosophy that are of considerable interest and 
significance. John Caird asserts that to ''constitute the exist- 
ence of the outward world" we must think it ''as existing for 
thought"; we must needs presuppose a "consciousness for 
which and in which all objective existence is." He therefore 
claims that to attempt to conceive of "an existence which is 
prior to thought" is "self-contradictory, inasmuch as that very 
thing-in-itself is only conceivable by, exists only for, thought." 
"We must think it before we can ascribe to it even an existence 
outside of thought." ^ Here we have the psychological idealism 
which is to serve as a foundation for absolute idealism, supported 
by the fallacious argument from the "egocentric predicament." 
T. H. Green, who is generally regarded as also a neo-Hegelian, 
remarks of this argument of Caird, that the reader "will be 
asking, from page to page, what, after all, this thought is which 
seems to be and to do anything and everything. Instead of 
being duly directed for an answer to an investigation of the 
objective world, and the source of the relations which deter- 
mine its content, he is rather put on the track of an introspec- 
tive inquiry what or how he can or cannot conceive. ... He 
will charge the author with confusing . . . the proposition 
that a thing is only conceivable by thought . . . with the 
proposition that the thing only exists for thought; the prop- 
osition, again, that no object can be conceived as existing 
except in relation to a thinking subject, with the proposition 
that it cannot exist except in that relation." ^ Green thus 
repudiates the argument from the egocentric predicament. 

Green's own method was to seek to ascertain the nature of 
"that thought which Hegel declares to be the reality of things" 

^ An Introduction to the Philosophy of Religion, 1904 ed., pp. 147-8. 
2 Works, Vol. Ill, pp. 143-4. 



THE OLDER ABSOLUTE IDEALISM 135 

"from analysis of the objective world, not from reflection on 
those processes of our intelligence which really presuppose the 
world." ^ Thus while John Caird and T. H. Green agreed in 
the end with Hegel that ''that only is real which is rational 
and that only is rational which is real," Caird's favorite approach 
to Hegelianism as a whole was along the line of the reality of 
the rational, while Green maintained that the only undogmatic 
path was that of the rationality of reality. In examining ''the 
constituents of that which we account real," he claimed to 
find "that they all imply some synthetic action which we only 
know as exercised by our own spirit." "Is it not true of all of 
them," he asks, "that they have their being in relations; and 
what other medium do we know of but a thinking consciousness 
in and through which the separate can be united in that way 
which constitutes a relation?" ^ 

But when we examine this positive argument for absolute 
idealism offered by Green, we find that it is not free from the 
fallacious assumption of psychological idealism. To cognize 
relations, it is assumed, is to construct the relations thus cog- 
nized — a doctrine which manifestly can be true only in so far 
as the experienced contents among which relations are cognized 
have reality only in and for consciousness, as parts of conscious- 
ness itself. This, of course, is psychological idealism. Green 
has no intention, however, of indorsing any view which would 
leave no room for the existence of any knowable reality beyond 
the consciousness of the finite subject. He therefore sets up 
again, in antithesis to the above thesis that relations are thought- 
constructs, the realistic doctrine that reality has relations 
which are not dependent upon the thought activity of the finite 
subject. The synthesis, depending, after the manner of Lotze's 
argument, upon the argument from analogy, is that there must 
be "a spiritual principle in nature" which constitutes the rela- 
tions existing independently of human consciousness. It is 
the fallaciousness of the assumed psychological idealism which 
renders necessary the dogmatism of this final synthesis. 

But Green's position has not been regarded as wholly sound 
by some other members of the so-called neo-Hegelian school. 

1 Ih., p. 144. 

>/6., p. 145; cf. Prolegomena to Ethics, §§ 13, 20, 26-9, 37, 52, 62, 70. ■ 



136 THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE 

His doctrine is better understood, perhaps, as an independent 
development from Kantianism than as an adoption of HegeHan- 
ism. He is related to Kant somewhat as Berkeley is related to 
Locke. Having cancelled the Kantian unknowable Ding an 
sich, he develops instead the doctrine of an eternal Conscious- 
ness, operating in human knowledge and activity. This 
Consciousness, however, he apparently hesitates to identify 
with the Hegelian Absolute Reason, or Thought, manifesting 
itself in nature and history.^ But it was chiefly for his doctrine 
that facts are relations that Green was criticised. The view 
that nature is a fixed and unalterable system of relations, and 
that these relations can only be explained as the work of mind, 
was attacked, not only by such non-idealists as A. J. Balfour, 
but by Bradley, Royce, Haldane, and others within the school.^ 
It was as if, after the similitude of Pharaoh's dream, the lean 
kine of relations had devoured the fat kine of qualities, only to 
remain at last as lean and ill-favored as ever. 

But Green is not the only member of this school who has come 
perilously near to allowing the objective absolute idealism to 
disintegrate into a subjective psychological idealism, or into 
a position which oscillates between such a subjectivism and a 
sort of abstractionism. J. H. Muirhead, for example, writes 
as follows: ''When I. say, 'What a lot of buttercups,' what I 
mean by buttercups is a system of judgments which I am ready 
to make in reference to a particular object, judgments which I 
am prepared to make because I have already made them."^ 
D. G. Ritchie goes quite as far when, after saying that the 
reality of things is "what we ought to think of them," he goes 
on to assert: "Facts are theories. . . . Sunrise is a theory, 
now discarded ; the reality is the rotation of the earth : and 
yet we are in the habit of speaking as if sunrise were the 
reality and the rotation of the earth the theory."^ Now 
whether it be asserted that nature is a system of mentally 
constituted relations, or a system of judgments, or a sum-total 

1 On the difference between the philosophical views of Edward Caird and 
T. H. Green, see article by John Watson, Philosophical Review, XVIII, 1909, 
especially pp. 161-2. 

2 See, e.g., R. B. Haldane, The Pathway to Reality, Bk. Ill, Ch. III. 

3 Mind, N.S., Vol. V, 1896, p. 512. 

* Darwin and Hegel, with Other Philosophical Studies, 1893, pp. 87, 91. 



THE OLDER ABSOLUTE IDEALISM 137 

of valid theories, the faulty analysis and dogmatism must be 
patent to every unbiassed mind. The fact is that the idealistic 
*' intuition" that 'Hhings are thoughts" has dictated the results 
of the analysis of experience, and then these " doctored " reports 
of experience are used in support of the original idealistic dogma. 

Edward Caird and John Watson are among the best and most 
typical representatives of a purely intellectualistic absolute 
idealism. What the latter says of the former is true of both : 
they never waver in the " conviction that the universe is rational 
and that its rationality can be proved." ^ According to Caird 
"the ontological argument ... is simply the expression of 
that highest unity of thought and being which all knowledge 
presupposes as its beginning and seeks as its end." ^ Thus 
idealism is regarded as the real meaning of the ontological 
argument. Jn another work Caird teaches that subject and 
object are necessarily related to each other, and necessarily 
distinguished from each other. Each presupposes the other, 
therefore neither can have produced the other; we cannot 
reduce the subject to a mere object among other objects nor the 
object to a mere phase in the life of the subject. We are there- 
fore forced to seek some all-embracing unity ; binding in one 
all being and all knowing. This unit}^, to the idea of which 
we have been thus dialectically conducted, is the absolute, all- 
comprehending Reason or Spirit.^ 

But is even this careful statement of the doctrine free from- 
dogmatism? Is it true that all thought presupposes the ''unity 
of thought and being" in the sense in which idealism interprets 
this phrase? Is it proved that object (interpreted as any real 
thing) and subject are ''necessarily related to each other"? 
Of course the object, as that which is presented to a subject, 
is necessarily related to the subject; but from this "egocentric 
predicament" nothing can be proved. And finally, is the Hege- 
lian Absolute the only concept which can conceivably synthesize 
the juxtaposed things and thinkers? Even in the moderate 
statements of Edward Caird, then, we find dogmatism and 
evidence of defective analysis. 

1 Philosophical Review, XVIII, 1909, p. 161. 

2 The Critical Philosophy of Kant, 1889, Vol. II, pp. 123, 128. 

3 The Evolution of Religion, 2d ed., 1894, Vol. I, pp. 64-8. 



138 THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE 

Much the same thing may be said of Watson. For an authori- 
tative and consistent exposition of the orthodox British Hegehan- 
ism one cannot do better than have recourse to the works of this 
philosopher, and the following passage is especially illuminating 
from this point of view. ''Nature, or the so-called 'external' 
world, is not external to mind, but only 'external' in the sense 
that it consists of objects outside of one another spatially, or 
of events external to one another in the sense of being discrete 
and 'marching single in an endless file.' We are, therefore, 
just as directly conscious of matter as of mind. Moreover, the 
external or material world is not given to us in our sensations ; 
for sensations in their singleness are not knowledge : only when 
they are ordered and combined under the forms of perception 
and thought have we any experience of nature. Now these 
forms do not, like sensation, vary with each individual and 
change upon us from moment to moment; they are identical 
in all men. Thus we all construct an external world which, 
vary as it may in its sensible aspects, is fundamentally the 
same in this sense, that it consists of objects in space and events 
in time, all of which are connected together by the bond of 
natural causation. This is the world which it is the business 
of the sciences to survey and reduce to specific laws." ^ 

Here again we see the identification of subjectivity with 
the sense-elements of the experience of the individual, while 
objectivity is regarded as the product of the union of these 
data of sense with the mental elements common to all minds. 
But is not the resulting "object" still essentially subjective? 
Such constructed objects may be similar enough in different 
individual experiences for a certain "imiversaHty" to attach 
to such perceptual experience; but it can never amount to 
objectivity in the sense of reality existing prior to and inde- 
pendently of the knowing relation. As Watson himself says, 
from his point of view "it is not true that facts are independent 
of the individual subject in so far as he is a rational intelligence." ^ 
What Watson does here is what the typical objective idealist 
(if not an epistemological dualist and therefore merely meta- 
physical ideaUst) always does; he substitutes subjective uni- 

1 The Philosophical Basis of Religion, 1907, pp. 76-7. 

2 The Interpretation of Religious Experience, 1912, Vol. II, p. 60. 



THE OLDER ABSOLUTE IDEALISM 139 

versality, universality-in-subjectivity, for true objectivity. 
(For simplicity we view Watson's philosophy here at a certain 
stage in its dialectical unfolding : we abstract from the meta- 
physical monism. Strictly, what we ascribe to him here is 
what he would have to say, finall}^, if it were not for his monism.) 
It is an ancient observation that '^ misery likes company," but 
a numerical multiplication of an essentially subjective experi- 
ence, like simple multiplication in any other situation, can 
hardly be said to change the character of the unit multiplied. 
That our interpretation of the philosopher's thought is not 
unfair is indicated by the later statement, ''To say that this 
world acts upon our minds is the same as saying that a world 
which exists only by the activity of our ^ minds is the cause 
of that activit}^" ^ 

What then becomes of the objective idealist's supposed 
escape from subjective idealism by means of the postulate 
''that we are capable of knowing Reality as it actually is"?^ 
One or other of two issues is possible. Either the appeal to the 
possibility of knowledge turns out to be a mere apology for the 
high-handed procedure involved in passing off for real objec- 
tivity certain common features in the subjectivity in which 
human and all conceivable experience is necessarily involved; 
or — and this is the horn of the dilemma which Watson chooses 
— starting from "the principle that there is one intelligible 
universe and one kind of intelligence,"^ one is forced to conclude 
that there is but one real mind or experience, the only objec- 
tivity being dependence for existence upon being known by the 
one and only mind. 

But, we would say, if the philosopher chooses to enter upon 
this path, let him have the courage of his convictions and follow 
it to the bitter end. Let him accept the solipsism of the Ab- 
solute, and the absolutely illusory character of his own individ- 
uality, as of all other plurality — a conclusion which few ab- 
solute idealists outside of India are consistent enough to draw, 
or frank enough to acknowledge. Assuredly, then, the objective 

^ Italics here are mine. 2 j^fig Philosophical Basis of Religion, p. 81. 

' J, Watson, An Outline of Philosophy, 1898, Preface, p. vi. 

* lb., p. 37 ; italics naine. Cf. The Interpretation of Religious Experience, 
Vol. I, p. 74. Watson is suspiciously reluctant, as shown by the context of the 
passage quoted, to admit that the oneness of the universe is an assumption. 



140 THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE 

idealist may be charged with failure to keep his promises : we 
bargained for bread, but he ostentatiously presents us with a 
stone ; we desired to be assured of the possibility of knowing a 
reality whose existence did not depend upon our awareness of 
it, and he has answered us by a virtual denial that we ourselves 
as finite individuals have any real existence. Such seems to be 
the penalty awaiting those who step aside from the true highway 
of knowledge into the devious by-paths of subjectivism and 
maintain their course in stubborn unrepentance. 

It may be instructive to examine further the argument by 
means of which this representative Hegelian defends the exist- 
ence of the one Absolute Mind. It will be seen that what is 
called necessary implication is really dogmatism based upon 
equivocation. ''An intelligible system," it is asserted, ''neces- 
sarily implies an intelligence that is capable of grasping the 
system.' ' ^ "Intelligible" in the course of this sentence changes 
its meaning from possessing the objective conditions for being 
known, to possessing all conditio7is for being known, subjective as 
well as objective. Similarly ' ' intelligence ' ' changes in meaning — 
as one sees from the context, the Absolute being finally meant — 
from that which can know something of an intelligible system to 
that which can know the system as a whole. If "intelhgible" 
had originally been taken in the second of its two meanings, 
and "intelligence" Hmited to the first of the two meanings 
given to it, the argument would violate no logical principle. 
It would be an entirely accurate interpretation of the meaning 
of a proposition, however useless for the purposes of the ab- 
solute idealist. The appearance of demonstration of the exist- 
ence of the Absolute Mind depends upon the double equivocation 
just pointed out. The original postulate of "an intelligible 
system" is supported by arguing that "if there exists any 
intelligence whatever, the universe must be intelligible." ^ 
This may be allowed to stand if appeal is made to experience, 
with its immediate awareness of the identity of the experience 
in which we know something and the experience in which 
something is known by us, and to the reflective knowledge that 
the conditions of the possibility of the one are the conditions 

1 The Interirretation of Religious Experience, Vol. I, p. 74 ; italics mine. 
a/6. 



THE OLDER ABSOLUTE IDEALISM 141 

of the possibility of the other. By means of a similar appeal to 
empirical intuition, we find that we may admit the further postu- 
late that any intelligence which ''knows the universe to be in- 
telligible" ''must be capable of knowing that it knows the 
universe to be intelligible." And so, with the help of an appeal 
to intuition which ultimately rests on experience, and yet de- 
pending of necessity upon the equivocation noted above, it is 
concluded that "our self-consciousness . . . implies a self- 
conscious intelligence that comprehends within itself all modes 
of personal consciousness." ^ After the manner of mediaeval 
scholasticism at its worst, specious arguments are called in to 
give the appearance of, rational demonstration to what remains 
in its essential nature an experience-contradicting dogma. 

Another direction from that taken by the intellectualistic 
absolute idealists is what we may call voluntaristic absolute 
idealism. Whereas in the intellectualistic type the absolute 
idea with which reality is identified is regarded as being deter- 
mined simply by rational processes of intellection, in this 
voluntaristic type the absolute idea is regarded as being de- 
termined primarily by purpose rather than by critical thought 
alone. The most eminent exponent, at least recently, of this 
variant form of the older absolute idealism is Josiah Royce. 
At first thought it may seem entirely proper to include a con- 
sideration of Fichte's system of thought in this connection, in 
view both of the voluntarism of his idealism and of the intro- 
duction of the notion of the Absolute Subject ; but inasmuch as 
he can hardly be said to have introduced what we have called 
logical ideahsm into his activistic or voluntaristic psychological 
idealism, or really to have made good his escape from subjective 
to objective idealism, we choose not to include at this point 
any further examination of his doctrine, but to confine ourselves 
to a brief exposition and critique of Royce's voluntaristic ab- 
solute idealism. 

Royce's philosophy may be regarded as essentially an attempt 
to develop the very modest, undogmatic theoretical idealism 
which we have called "relative idealism" into an all-com- 
prehending absolute idealism, and that for the solution of the 
modern epistemological problem which has arisen out of psy- 

1 Ih., pp. 74-6. 



142 THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE 

chologism. It is true that an important factor in the develop- 
ment of Royce's philosophy has been the discovery of a capri- 
cious and irrational element in reality, a discovery which serves 
to differentiate his philosophy from intellectualistic absolute 
idealism, with its assumption that reality, without remainder, 
is intelligible, and in connection with which discovery, as in 
the case of his voluntarism, he acknowledges the influence 
of Schopenhauer.^ But the main foundation of Royce's con- 
structive philosophical work seems to be, after the psychological 
idealism everywhere presupposed, the generally admitted fact 
that our ideas are determined, to begin with, at least, by our 
purposes. But while, according to ''relative idealism," the idea 
determines the selection of the reality to be considered, and also, 
within very narrow limits, may be said to enter into and become 
a part of that reality for the particular purpose concerned,^ in 
Royce's philosophy on the other hand all reality is viewed as 
constituted, in the last analysis, by purpose. And yet, as we 
shall presently see more clearly, it is the underlying psychological 
or subjective idealism which makes it impossible, logically, to 
stop with relative idealism, and leads on to an idealism in every 
respect absolute. 

To this conclusion Royce leads up by a dialectical process 
starting, in the most important form of his argument, from the 
antinomy which seems to exist between what he calls the 
internal and the external meaning of ideas. By ''internal mean- 
ing" is meant purpose, "in so far as it gets a present conscious 
embodiment in the contents and in the form of the complex 
state called the idea." By "external meaning" is meant 
"reference (of ideas) beyond themselves to objects." ^ Or, in 
other words, the internal meaning of my idea is what I call 
my purpose ; it is what I mean in so far as I am aware of my 
purpose. The external meaning, on the other hand, is the total 
reality which I come to know as the realization of my purpose, 
the reality which I meant. The antinomy lies in the twofold 
and apparently self-contradictory character of the meaning of 

1 The Spirit of Modern Philosophy, 1892, pp. 261-4 ; The Problem of Chris- 
tianity, 1913, Vol. I, p. xii. 

2 See discussion of "tertiary qualities" in Ch. XIV, infra. 

3 The World and the Individual, Vol. I, 1899, pp. 25-6. 



THE OLDER ABSOLUTE IDEALISM 143 

meaning. At one time it seems to be a mere content in some 
one's mind ; at another time it appears as the subject-matter 
for an unlimited number of judgments.^ 

The solution of this antinomy is stated as follows: "Now 
the obvious way of stating the whole sense of these facts is to 
point out that what the idea always aims to find in its object 
is nothing whatever but the idea's own conscious purpose or 
will, embodied in some more determinate form than the idea 
by itself alone at this instant consciously possesses. When I 
have an idea of the world, my idea is a will, and the world of 
my idea is simply my own will itself determinately embodied." ^ 
That is to say, the external meaning is simply identical with the 
internal meaning ; the thing meant — in spite of any appearance 
to the contrary — is conscious purpose regarded as completely 
determined. ''The complete content of the idea's own purpose 
is the only object of which the idea can ever take note." ^ 
Stated more generally, the conclusion is that ''what is, or what 
is real, is as such the complete embodiment, in individual form 
and in final fulfilment, of the internal meaning of finite ideas." '* 
The object of any idea is "an individual life, present as a whole, 
totum simul. , . . This life is at once a system of facts, and the 
fulfilment of whatever purpose any finite idea, in so far as it 
is true to its own meaning, already fragmentarily embodies. 
This life is the completed will, as well as the completed ex- 
perience, corresponding to the will and experience of any one 
finite idea. ... To be, in the final sense, means to be just such 
a life, complete, present to experience, and conclusive of the 
search for perfection which every finite idea in its own measure 
undertakes whenever it seeks for any object." ^ 

Now the gist of this argument may be put as follows : What 
I mean (internal meaning) is my idea, purpose, plan of action. 
Reality is what I mean (external meaning). Therefore, reality 
is my idea, purpose, plan of action. Manifestly it is a case of 
the fallacy of "four terms," unless in some way internal and 
external meaning can be absolutely identified. But in view 
of the underlying psychological idealism, and by the introduc- 
tion of metaphysical monism, which identifies my real self with 

1 lb., pp. 320-4. 2 76., p. 327. » lb., p. 329. 

4/&., p. 339. » 76., pp. 341-2. 



144 THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE 

the Absolute Self, it becomes possible to make this identification. 
Reality, then, is what I mean, my idea or purpose, as it is for my 
Absolute . Self . But this is to escape fallacy at the expense of 
assuming the dogmas of metaphysical monism (singularism) 
and psychological idealism. From Royce^s own point of view, 
it should be noted, the argument is not fallacious ; assuming a 
monistic or solipsistic psychological idealism, ever3rthing 
''external" is internal, and so ''external meaning" is internal 
meaning. This psychological idealism, however, is itself fal- 
lacious, and is here in union with the (also fallacious) logical 
idealism involved in the proposition. Reality is my idea or purpose. 
This philosophical doctrine which Royce offers as a synthesis 
of mysticism or subjective empiricism, and dualistic realism, 
more conclusive than any that "critical rationalism" by itself 
is able to accomplish, may be similarly reached from many 
different starting-points, as we learn from an examination of 
the various works of this philosopher. Taking as his thesis 
the proposition that there is a whole truth — a proposition such 
that to deny it is to assume it ^ — he sets over against it the an- 
tithesis that for any reahty to be represented in judgments, as the 
ideal of truth demands, an infinite series of judgments would 
be required. But such a system could never be complete, 
while the reality of complete truth is a necessary presupposition 
of all judgment. The one synthesizing concept — since realism 
is rejected and psychological idealism is presupposed — is found 
in the idea of a total rational system, or absolute experience, 
in which the infinite is actual as a " self -representative system." ^ 
Even to assert the possibility of error, or the fact of one's 
ignorance, assumes the reality of truth, and therefore involves 
the same conclusion.^ The same final synthesis is involved in 
affirming the reality of the self,^ or of individuality,^ and even 
in willing the good.^ What the self is, or what any individual 

1 The Philosophy of Loyalty, 1908, p. 345. 

2 William James and Other Essays, 1911, Essay IV; The Philosophy of Loy- 
alty, Lect. VII ; The World and the Individual, Vol. I, Supplementary Essay. 

' The Religious Aspect of Philosophy, 1895, Ch. XI ; The Conception of God, 
1897, pp. 15-44; The Sources of Religious Insight, 1912, pp. 105-116. 
* Studies of Good and Evil, 1898, Ch. VI. 
^ The Conception of Immortality, 1900, passim. 
« William James and Other Essays, 1912, Essay V. 



THE OLDER ABSOLUTE IDEALISM 145 

is, or what the good which is willed really is, can be completely 
shown, in time, only in an unending series; as real, therefore, 
each of these involves a time-transcending but time-including 
absolute system or experience, in which what we mean is eter- 
nally real. Finally, in his recent lectures on Christianity, Royce 
presents his argument in yet another form. Two oarsmen 
believe themselves to be in one and the same boat, although this 
is not a direct perception, according to Royce, but an interpre- 
tation. Assuming the truth of psychological idealism we should 
have to admit this ; the contents of the perceptual consciousness 
of the two men are not fully identical qualitatively, much less 
numerically. The interpretation put upon their experiences 
by the two men, viz. that they are in the same boat, cannot be 
true from this (subjective-idealistic) point of view, unless there 
is an absolute, all-inclusive experience, in which what is per- 
ceived by the men only fragmentarily is experienced with all 
its relations, totum simul, as an infinite totality. ^ Thus for 
Royce all dialectical paths lead to the Absolute, a realization 
of all possible meaning, a unity of all that is or can be meant, 
in a single concrete experience. 

Royce's system, by whatever argument it may be defended, 
is vulnerable, both in its process and in its conclusion. If, instead 
of invoking the Absolute to save him from the infinite regress, 
Royce had learned from the pragmatist that the true and the 
good, and even the self and other individuals, can be defined 
sufficiently for such hwnan purposes as ought to he considered, 
he would have been saved from the necessity of giving his ad- 
herence to the self-contradictory 2 notion of an actual infinite 
total of definite qualities and relations. 

But the fons et origo mali in all of the above arguments is, 
let it be repeated, the fallacious and dogmatic assumption of 
psychological idealism. What do I really mean when I assert 
that there is something of which I am ignorant ? Is it, as some 
would say,^ either my own, or some one's future experience, or, 
as Royce asserts, a present, or better, super-temporal experience 
of the Absolute? Why future in the one case? And why 
experience in the other case? Is not all we can say without 

1 The Problem of Christianity, Vol. II, pp. 241-3. 2 See pp. 462-70, infra. 

3 E.g. Dewey, Journal of Philosophy, etc.. Vol. IV, 1907, p. 202. 
L 



146 THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE 

dogmatism simply that it is a present reality of which I or some 
one else may perhaps have a future experience, and of which 
whatever ''Absolute'^ there may be ground for positing may, 
only possibly, have experience at present? The further asser- 
tions can only be made on the basis of psychological idealism. 

But even apart from any criticism of psychological idealism, 
or of the notion of an actual infinite, the charge is frequently 
made against the older absolute idealism, whether intellectualis- 
tic or voluntaristic, that it can be shown to be self-refuting, 
in that the elements of finite experience are what they are in 
some measure by reason of the finiteness of the experience, so 
that their inclusion, without modification, in an infinite or ab- 
solute experience is, in the nature of things, impossible. This 
criticism, as against Royce, has been well put by A. K. Rogers, 
who writes: ''What can the duplication of thought and ex- 
perience be like for an Absolute Being? I think of things only 
because direct experience is impossible for the time. ... How 
can we make our ignorance a part of an all-inclusive experience 
without denying its existence (or changing it)? Can I feel 
baffled and see the solution in the same experience? Is my 
feeling of ignorance identical with God's consciousness of ig- 
norance? If so, we must accept an Absolute that grows in 
knowledge. ... If not, there are two facts, only one of which 
is the experience of the Absolute ; for my feeling of ignorance 
dominates my consciousness, and cannot dominate God's." ^ 
Or, as Bosanquet remarks, if the later occurrences modify 
the earlier occurrences, the events cannot remain, in actual 
content, within a larger span of consciousness, what they were 
or could be within a shorter.^ 

But these last criticisms are but repetitions, essentially, of 
certain phases of the self-refutation of the older absolute idealism 
accomplished once for all by F. H. Bradley, chiefly in his 
Appearance and Reality. Absolute idealism, having always 
wielded the sword of intellectual criticism, seems to have been 
doomed to perish, at least in its older forms, by that self-same 

^ "Professor Royce and Monism," Philosophical Review, XII, 1903, pp. 47 ff. 
Cf. A. Aliotta, The Idealistic Reaction against Science, Eng. Tr., 1914, pp. 259- 
65; A. E. Taylor, Mind, N.S., XXI, 1912, pp. 540-1. 

2 The Principle of Individuality and Value, 1912, pp. 387-8. 



THE OLDER ABSOLUTE IDEALISM 147 

sword. It has found, in Bradley, one of its most formidable 
foes within its own household. In view, then, of this fact, and 
of the attempts which, as we shall see, have recently been made 
to reconstruct an absolute idealism in spite of the havoc wrought 
by this critic, we may perhaps most instructively classify all 
types of Anglo-American absolute idealism under three main 
heads, viz. the pre-Bradleian construction, the Bradleian de- 
struction, and the post-Bradleian reconstruction. We must 
now consider the second of these, the antithesis in the dialectic 
of modern absolutism. 

Bradley started as an adherent of the orthodox absolute 
idealism.^ He proposed to take seriously the conclusion, 
'' inherited from others," ^ that reality is a single experience, in 
which all realities with all their appearances are included. In 
trying to think this through, however, he comes to the conclusion 
that it is a self-contradictory notion that such an experience 
can be ordered according to the principles of reason. 

Of fundamental importance here is Bradley's judgment ( !) 
that all judgment is essentially fallacious, in that it ''attributes 
to a subject something other than itself, and which the subject 
is not." ^ Thought can never, however complete, be quite the 
same as reality.^ Being abstract, relational, discursive, it 
can never be the same even as the lower and less inclusive im- 
mediacy and all-togetherness of individual human experience. 
He thus reaffirms, in effect, in his latest utterances the well- 
known conclusion of an early work: "Unless thought stands 
for something that falls beyond mere intelligence, if 'thinking' 
is not used with some strange implication that never was part 
of the meaning of the word, a lingering scruple still forbids 
us to believe that reality can ever be purely rational. It may 
come from a failure in my metaphysics or from a weakness of 
the flesh which continues with me, but the notion that existence 
could be the same as the understanding strikes us as cold and 
ghostlike and as the dreariest materialism. That the glory of 
this world in the end is appearance leaves the world more 
glorious, if we feel it is a show of some fuller splendor; but 

1 See Ethical Studies, 1876. 2 Essays on Truth and Reality, 1914, p. 246. 
3 Appearance and Reality, 1st ed., 1893, 2d ed., 1897, p. 57. 
* lb., p. 554 ; cf. Essays on Truth and Reality, 1914, pp. 230-3. 



148 THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE 

the sensuous curtain is a deception and a cheat, if it hides some 
colorless movement of atoms, some spectral woof of impal- 
pable abstractions, or unearthly ballet of bloodless categories. 
Though dragged to such conclusions, we cannot embrace them. 
Our principles may be true, but they are not reality. They no 
more make that whole which commands our attention than some 
shredded dissection of human tatters is that warm and breath- 
ing beauty of flesh which our hearts found delightful." ^ 

Not only, then, it is claimed, can thought not be identical 
with human experience ; far less can it be identified with the all- 
inclusive experience, for, as compared with this, even im- 
mediate human experience itself is infected with unreahty. 
For example, reality cannot be said to be made up of substances 
which have qualities, for we do not know what a substance is. 
It is not the qualities, nor is it anything, so far as we can know, 
behind the qualities. ^ Neither can we regard reality as made 
up of qualities in relations. Quahties are never found without 
relations, and cannot be conceived as existing without them; 
and yet, qualities with relations are no more intelligible. The 
qualities cannot be wholly resolved into relations, nor can any 
quality be found so simple that it is not made what it is to 
some extent by some of its relations. Similarly of relations : 
without their terms they are nothing; but even with their 
terms they are unintelHgible. If the relation is nothing to 
the qualities, they are not related ; the relation is a nonentity. 
If, however, the relation is something to the terms, there is a 
relation between the relation and the term ; and so on in unend- 
ing regress.^ And so of primary and secondary qualities,^ space 
and time,^ motion and change,^ causation,^ activity,^ and the 
self.^ The difficulty is especially great in connection with 
error. It cannot, exactly as it is experienced by the person in 
error, belong to the all-including unitary experience, in the 
light of which all error is corrected ; and yet the error is a fact and 
so cannot be excluded from reality.^'^ Even a suggestion which 
Bradley finds useful in accommodating his metaphysics to 
common sense, viz. that there are degrees of reality, is not ab- 

1 Principles of Logic, 1883, p. 553. 2 Appearance and Reality, 2d ed., Ch. II. 
3 76., Ch. III. 4 75.^ Ch. I. s 75.^ ch. IV. « lb., Ch. V. 

7 76., Ch. VI. 8 76., Ch. VII. ^ 76., Chs. IX, X. ^ 76., Ch. XVI. 



THE OLDER ABSOLUTE IDEALISM 149 

solutely true; everything either is, or is not, absolutely real.* 
And yet appearances exist, and whatever exists must belong 
to reality ; - but they cannot exist in the experience of the 
Absolute exactly as they exist in ours, because different experi- 
ences are from time to time discrepant with each other.^ 

In the end, therefore, while retaining the idea of Reality, 
or the Absolute, as a single, all-inclusive, and perfectly harmoni- 
ous experience, Bradley concludes that we can have only a 
vague idea of its nature. It is not personal, but super-personal ; 
not moral, but super-moral; not rational, but super-rational. 
Critical rationalism, the only method we can use, is futile, so 
far as any detailed positive knowledge of the Absolute Experi- 
ence is concerned. The only method that would be adequate, 
viz. immediate or mystical intuition, we cannot use; that is 
for the Absolute alone. Absolute idealism, then, in the strict 
sense of the term, is given up. Ideas and reason having only 
human and relative value, idealism becomes a misnomer.* 
Absolutism remains, but it is such as might be called absolute 
empiricism, or absolute immediatism. One might even say 
that Bradley's view is a negative or agnostic mystical ab- 
solutism; reality, knowable in any case only by mystical 
intuition, is held to be for man essentially unknowable. 

As a polemic against orthodox absolute idealism Bradley's 
criticism was highly successful. The main criticisms to be 
directed against his own position are perhaps two, viz. first, 
that he is over-sceptical as regards the power of the human 
understanding to make a true judgment — a question which 
will be taken up in our discussion of the problem of truth ; and, 
secondly, that he is dogmatic in retaining what he does of the 
absolute idealism which his criticism has shown to be self- 
refuting. In fact, Bradley seems not to have completely realized 
how far-reaching are the logical consequences of his argument. 
The absolute idealism which he criticises started with the 
postulate that reality is rational, and, in order to defend this, 
was led by a dialectical process to conclude that reality is a 
single all-inclusive experience. Bradley, originally accepting 
the current idealism, comes finally to see that if reality is a single 

1 lb., Ch. XXIV. 2 76., pp. 132, 140. 

3 lb., pp. 241, 511. * See Appearance and Reality, p. 547. 



150 THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE 

all-inclusive experience, it cannot be rational, intelligible.^ 
F. C. S. Schiller holds that an all-inclusive conscious experience 
could only be regarded as ''morbidly dissociated, or even down- 
right mad." ^ 

Logically considered, then, the situation is this : either reality 
is a single all-inclusive experience, and therefore not intelligible ; 
or reality is not a single all-inclusive experience, in which case it 
may be conceived either as rational or as not rational. Bradley 
chooses the first of the major alternatives, that reality is a single 
super-rational experience; but unless a sufficient reason is 
given for this choice, it is essentially dogmatic. The only 
approach to a reason for rejecting the view that reality is not a 
single experience is that one of the two possible ways of inter- 
preting this view would require one to hold that there can be 
true judgments, a conclusion which Bradley imagines cannot be 
maintained, because the predicate is never absolutely identical 
with the subject. But if a judgment, to be true, need not have 
an absolute identity between the subject and the predicate, 
Bradley's objection falls to the ground, and the view that reafity 
is essentially intelligible, but not all one experience, is seen to 
be admissible. But even with Bradley's strange prejudice 
against judgments, why should he not choose the view that 
reality is not all one experience, instead of this doctrine which 
he ''inherited from others"? Indeed this would have been a 
more defensible course than to retain, as he did, a conclusion, 
the original basis of which he had just destroyed. But, of 
course, with his theory that the judgment is never possibly 
true, Bradley would not be justified in holding to his view; 
and for the same reason neither is he justified in judging his own 
theory to be true. As a critic points out, "the very fact that 
this conclusion is arrived at by judgments, which both by Mr. 
Bradley's own methods and his own acknowledgement are 
self-contradictory, is of itself quite sufficient both to invalidate 
it and to make his system self -refuting." ^ What Bradley him- 
self says is that "in the end no possible truth is quite true." 
Thus, while claiming that his view is ultimate for intellect, 

1 Appearance and Reality, p. 554. 

^Journal of Philosophy, etc., Vol. Ill, 1906, p. 482. 

8 E. G. Spaulding, Philosophical Review, Vol. XIX, 1910, p. 631. 



THE OLDER ABSOLUTE IDEALISM 151 

and that any alternative is more inconceivable, he has to confess 
that even what is for us absolute truth is necessarily erroneous.^ 
And so, while Bradley is to be credited with revealing the 
untenability of monistic or absolute idealism on rational grounds, 
we are entitled to condemn his own metaphysics as being not 
only dogmatic, but, for one with his presuppositions as to judg- 
ments, logically untenable. 

It should not be imagined, however, that either the incon- 
sistency of Bradley's metaphysics with his doctrine of the judg- 
ment, or the untenability of the latter nullifies the value of his 
criticism of absolute idealism. That criticism has sufficient 
foundation in the discrepancy shown to exist between many 
of the various existent appearances which reality presents in 
different human experiences. In showing that the older ab- 
solute idealism is irrational, and therefore not valid, he has per- 
formed his major service, and one which is not affected by 
what he has to say about his own view. 

But it is important to note that Bradley's sceptical conclusion 
does not necessarily hold for one whose presuppositions are 
different. Bradley in presupposing the doctrine of absolute 
ideaHsm, that all reaUty is included in one conscious experience 
and is identical with that experience, necessarily presupposes 
at the same time that doctrine's presuppositions, viz. psycho- 
logical idealism and logical idealism. The logical idealism is 
eliminated in the end ; reality, it is assumed, is not what is illogi- 
cal, self-contradictory; but, it is finally concluded, neither is 
it what is logical. It is not even known by means of, much less 
made up of, logical ideas. Rather is it immediate content of 
one all-inclusive conscious experience, nothing more. Now it 
is noteworthy that it is in connection with the initial combina- 
tion of metaphysical monism with psychological and logical 
idealism that the principal difficulties Bradley mentions with 
regard to substances, quafities, relations, and the rest, present 
themselves. Following the initial form of the thought, we have, 
in effect, the following argument. Relations are constituted 
by the thought which perceives or knows them. There can 
therefore be as many relations between relations as can be 
thought — in other words, an unending series. But if relations, 

1 Op. ciL, pp. 542-7. 



152 THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE 

as they seem to be, are real, independently of human thought, 
there must be as many in reaHty (the Absolute Experience) 
as could be constituted by thought in an unending series of 
mental acts — in other words, an actual infinite number, which 
is self-contradictory.^ Now the obvious thing to do here is to 
retrace one's steps, in order to find where one went so badly 
astray as finally to be led into the self-contradiction. It would 
be found that if the fallacious doctrines of idealism had been 
avoided, the self-contradictory conclusion would never have 
been forced upon the thinker. But Bradley does not choose 
to part with his idealistic presuppositions just yet, but to 
give up instead the common-sense doctrine that relations are 
real independently of finite thought. Reality, then, it is con- 
cluded, is non-relational, and therefore also non-rational. Thus 
the logical idealism drops out of Bradley's absolutism finally. 
But it has been assumed all along that reality is not irrational, 
self-contradictory. Bradley, therefore, since he refuses to 
retrace his steps again, goes on to overcome this opposition 
between the assumption that reaHty is not irrational and the 
conclusion that reality is not rational, by postulating the super- 
rationality of reality. If, however, when first forced to retrace 
his steps, Bradley had eliminated the fallacious idealism from 
his premises, and had thus been led to regard relations, not as 
thought-products (except in the case of tertiary relations) ,2 
but as phases of reality of which there may be immediate ex- 
periences, or of which ideas (thought-products) may be formed, 
he would have found nothing contradictory in supposing them 
to be either presented in the experience or represented in the 
thought of the most comprehensive consciousness which really 
is. Such an experience, however, would not be identical with 
reality, nor would it necessarily include all possible experiences 
of reality. It may be thought of as including only such ap- 
pearances of reality as are necessary for the reaUzing of certain 
superhuman purposes. But whether such a superhuman 
experience exists or not is another question; it is not under 
debate in this volume. 

And what is true of relations is true of other elements of human 
experience relegated by Bradley to the realm of mere appearance, 

1 See pp. 462-70, infra. 2 See Ch. XIV, infra. 



THE OLDER ABSOLUTE IDEALISM 153 

because of the contradiction involved in the "infinite regress." 
This unending regress is primarily due not to the attempt to 
state the one Absolute Experience in terms of human thought, 
but to the attempt to state all reality as mere contents of one 
conscious experience. From an essentially realistic and moder- 
ately pragmatic point of view there can be not only a true and 
adequate representation of experience in judgment, but an ade- 
quate experience and representation of reality without the un- 
ending regress. If, then, a realistic point of view were once 
established, Bradley's baffling paradoxes would largely dis- 
appear; and with the adoption of an essentially pragmatic 
criterion of truth, such of them as might still threaten would 
be easily and happily avoided. 



CHAPTER VIII 

The Newer Absolute Idealism 

In the wake of Bradley's destructive criticism of the older 
absolute idealism there have appeared several attempted re- 
constructions of that philosophy, of which those of Bernard 
Bosanquet, A. E. Taylor, and W. E. Hocking may be taken as 
fairly representative. They embody the intellectualistic, the 
voluntaristic, and the mystical emphasis, respectively. The 
first two expHcitly take account of Bradley's work and give 
quite favorable consideration to some of his most characteristic 
views. They claim, however, that, beyond what is retained by 
Bradley, certain of the most essential elements of absolute 
ideaUsm proper can find place in the new construction. The 
third of the three philosophers mentioned has probably been 
influenced by Royce more than by Bradley ; and yet his phi- 
losophy stands in a peculiarly interesting relation to that of the 
English philosopher. While Bradley maintains that the only 
conceivable knowledge of Absolute Reality would have to be an 
immediate or mystical intuition, which, however, he regards 
as humanly inaccessible, Hocking claims that this intuition 
of the Whole is in principle present in all human consciousness, 
and especially in the religious experience of the mystic. Royce's 
voluntaristic philosophy, although given to the world in its 
more finished form later than the first pubhcation of Bradley's 
Appearance and Reality, and although itself a newer absolute 
idealism, as compared with the intellectualistic type, has 
nevertheless been regarded here as pre-Bradleian, inasmuch 
as it does not take seriously the difficulties raised by Bradley 
against the possibility of a conscious experience which is ra- 
tional and at the same time inclusive of all finite experiences 
without modification. 

Among the different attempts to rehabihtate absolute ideal- 
ism, the one which keeps closest to Bradley's own position is 

154 



THE NEWER ABSOLUTE IDEALISM 155 

that of Bosanquet. Not only does he emphasize with Bradley 
the rational criterion of non-contradiction as a test of reality 
as distinguished from appearance ; he also accepts the negative 
results of the Bradleian criticism of the "thing," the "self," 
and of the moral and religious consciousness, takes over the 
doctrine of degrees of reality, and even expresses amazement 
at the unfavorable reception accorded to Bradley's doctrines 
by philosophers generally.^ Unlike Bradley, however, Bosan- 
quet emphasizes the positive residue of idealistic doctrine which 
seems still tenable, and undertakes to develop this residue into 
a sane and sufficient philosophy of reality.^ 

Bosanquet is more favorable than is Bradley to the Hegelian 
principle that the real is the rational. Unlike Green and others, 
who put their emphasis upon the predicate, maintaining that 
the real is the rational, in the sense of being what it does not 
seem to be, viz. constituted of thought-relations, Bosanquet 
places his emphasis upon the subject, insisting that it is reality 
that is rational. In other words, it is the actual — the absolute 
reality which is everything and with which we are in immediate 
relation in experience — which is rational, at least in the sense 
of being free from all self-contradiction.^ This realistic ten- 
dency in Bosanquet's thought finds especially congenial the 
Hegelian notion of the "concrete universal," which, it is in- 
sisted, means the self-complete and harmonious individual, 
discoverable through rational criticism of what is given in 
experience. Of course our fragmentary experience has to be 
supplemented by thought, which is able to trace out the reality 
in so far as it transcends what is actually given.^ As distinct 
from generality, which is sameness in spite of the other, and 
whose test is the number of subjects which can share a predicate, 
universality is sameness by means of the other, and its test is 
the number of predicates which can be attached to the subject. 

1 The Principle of Individuality and Value, 1912, p. 57 ; cf . p. 40. 

2 76., p. 30. 

3 76., pp. 27, 41, 51, 378. "It is possible," the author significantly observes 
on p. 39, "that those philosophers may prove to hold the more suitable lan- 
guage who deny that thought can ever be one with the real. But at any rate, 
we are bound to follow thought . . . towards ... a fuller perfection in the 
certainty that if it is itself a vanishing form, it will point us the way to what lies 
beyond, and when necessary, introduce us to its nature." 

* lb., pp. 55, 257-8. 



156 THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE 

The true embodiment of the logical universal is not an abstrac- 
tion, but an individual, a self-complete world. Ultimately, 
indeed, it is the Individual, a world whose members are worlds.^ 
But the system is not so free from the fallacious ideahstic 
analysis and consequent confusions as might be supposed from 
these leanings toward realistic forms of expression. The 
fundamental view is that reality is experience ; ^ truth means 
nothing different from reality ; ^ since the subject of all predica- 
tion is Reality, and since there are no ideas which do not quahfy 
this subject, ^'it follows that the truth of the ontological argu- 
ment is conceded in principle'';^ on the one hand "nature 
. . . exists only through the finite mind," ^ and matter, taken 
as independent non-psychical existence, is a substantiated 
abstraction,^ while on the other hand, thinking is in essence 
simply a change in a being or content, viz. its passing beyond 
itself,^ and inwardness is to be interpreted as meaning simply 
inseparable continuity,^ "All objects of the mind," it is roundly 
declared, "are psychical. But some are physical as well; 
that is, some enter into a determinate context of reactions, which 
forms a special part of the psychical world, which we call the 
physical world and contrast with the psychical. But this is an 
abstraction, for the physical world can never, in the last resort, 
put off its psychical character. A tree is beautiful and green and 
tall. All these qualities are, as presentations, necessarily psychi- 
cal ; but the tallness at least, as a character of a thing in space, 
is certainly physical. And this is probably the true line of de- 
marcation. They are all, as we said, psychical ah initio as 
presentations. But qua determined by a construction of ob- 
jects in space they all (including 'physical' beauty) become 
physical also. Then they are relatively opposable to the 
psychical. But not more than relatively. For, taking as the 
test of psychical nature the being destroyed if the percipient 
mind were destroyed, it is plain that in a degree, though only in 
a degree, presentations remain psychical not only as pure pres- 
entations, but even as qualities of spatial objects. The sub- 
jective mind, which has perceived and which conceives them, 

1 The Principle of Individicality and Value, 1912, pp. 37, 68. ^ 75,^ p. 39. 
' lb., p. 41. -• lb,, p. 80. 6 jb., pp. 359, 371. 

« lb., p. 73. 7 lb., p. 60. » lb., pp. 73-7. 



THE NEWER ABSOLUTE IDEALISM 157 

being destroyed, their existence would certainly be pro tanto 
diminished, though not necessarily annihilated. A physical 
object must at least be capable of becoming psychical at any 
moment. If not, it so far has not full existence." ^ 

What we have here is not the mere outcome of a faulty analysis, 
with its ignoring of the difference between the object known 
through perception and thought, and the sense- and thought- 
elements through which it is known ; we have an apergu carefully 
preserved for its convenience in making the transition from the 
preliminary realistic interpretation of experience ^ to the view 
that the Individual which is the Whole is a single all-inclusive 
and absolutel}^ self-consistent experience.^ The concept of 
subject, while not ultimaiely true, is vaUd as a substitute for that 
of substance.'* But while holding that the Individual is mind,^ 
we must not fall into the snare of pluralism, a temptation to 
which we are especially exposed because of the ineradicable 
superstition that finite minds are substances.® We must 
remember that the true nature of mind is a world of experience.'' 
Things are not mind-dependent, but mind-component.^ In- 
stead of pluralism Bosanquet offers multiplicism, the view that 
there are various levels of experience, each possessing its peculiar 
range and area,^ the highest being the Absolute Experience 
which is identical with Absolute Reality.^^ 

This ''multiphcism," which corresponds to Bradley's doctrine 
of degrees of reality, is the conclusion to which Bosanquet is 
driven by his acceptance of the main results of the Bradleian 
criticism, together with his determination to cling to Hegelian- 

1 76., p. 361. 2 cf. The Distinction between Mind and Its Objects, 1913. 

' The Principle of Individuality and Value, pp. 56, 386. ^ 76., p. 284. 

5 76., p. 286. 6 76., pp. 372-3. ^ 75.^ p. 287. 

8 The Distinction between Mind and Its Objects, p. 42. 

8 Principle of Individuality and Value, p. 373. 

10 In The Value and Destiny of the Individual, 1913, pp. 59-60, Bosanquet 
offers a dialectical argument for a certain phase of this view, as follows : 
Thesis: "What we call individual finite beings are kept apart by differences 
of quality of feeling and also by the reciprocal shortcomings of the content of 
which they are composed. These differences of quality, and these shortcomings, 
are often held to be the secret of individuality, the secret by which I am myself 
and not another, because I have not his immediate feeling, and do not compre- 
hend his capacities within mine." Antithesis: "When I most fall short of 
others, and am most in discord of feeling quality with them, I am also least 
myself." Synthesis: "We do not experience ourselves as we really are." 



158 THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE 

ism, rather than to adopt a bona fide reahsm. But that it is 
self-refuting, by Bosanquet's own principle of non-contradic- 
tion, can be readily shown. There is inconsistency, on the very 
face of it, with the monistic fact that all experience is ultimately 
one experience. The appearances which constitute the contents 
of the lower levels of experience are at least psychically real. 
According to Bosanquet they are both included in the Ab- 
solute Experience, because they are real, and at the same time 
excluded therefrom, as mutually conflicting appearances. 
An attempt is made to cover up this contradiction by appealing 
to the way in which the elements of our experience are trans- 
muted by every change of work and of scene ; so, it is claimed, 
the experiences of conscious units are transmuted, reenforced, 
and rearranged by entrance into the fuller and more extended 
experience of the Absolute.^ Hence 'Hhere is no reason for 
making . . . the transmutation of experience in accordance 
with the law of non-contradiction ... a fundamental diffi- 
culty when we come to deal with fundamental reality. . . . 
The Absolute is simply the high-water mark of fluctuations in 
experience, of which, in general, we are daily and normally 
aware." ^ But in criticism of this it may be pointed out that 
there is a difference between the two cases which destroys all 
the value of the analogy. The finite mind does not retain the 
past inadequate experience along with the present more adequate 
one ; the latter is a substitute, which cancels the former. The 
Absolute, however, as all-inclusive experience, must retain both 
human experiences, the earlier experience with the inadequate 
appearance which is its content, and the later experience with 
its more adequate appearance which cancels and banishes the 
former. In other words, when the appearance of an object 
changes, there is a substitution of one experience for another, 
and the former experience is gone beyond recall; even apart 
from the lapse of time, it is an experience which could no longer 
exist along with the other. But still, as an experience, it was as 
reall}^ existent as the later one, and so would have to be included 
along with the other in an all-inclusive Absolute Experience. 
Bosanquet is right as against Royce, when he contends that the 
inclusion together of the two experiences would modify the earlier 

1 The Principle of Individuality and Value, pp. 372-3. ^ 75.^ pp. 377-8. 



THE NEWER ABSOLUTE IDEALISM 159 

one ; ^ but as against Bosanquet himself it must be urged that 
the whole reality of an experience is in its actuality, and when this 
is 'transmuted" it is no longer reality, but a departure from it. 
On this showing the Absolute, as inclusive of all reality, could 
not be an experience and nothing more. Hence we feel justified 
in regarding Bosanquet's rehabilitation of absolute idealism as 
revealing only the more plainly how complete has been the 
wreck made of that once respectable philosophy by the Brad- 
leian criticism. If the Absolute, as Reality, were recognized as 
itself not a mere experience, however unified, but as a reality 
of which, while we have inadequate experiences, some Being 
may have an adequate experience, then might our philosopher 
be permitted to say, ''We experience the Absolute better than 
we experience anything else, because ... we experience the 
Absolute in everything "; ^ but so long as the fundamental 
dogma of idealism, that reality is idea or experience, is retained, 
a finally self -consistent philosophy seems unattainable. 

A. E. Taylor has been deeply influenced by Bradley's ra- 
tionalistic critique of rationalistic or intellectualistic al)solute 
idealism, and he retains the Bradleian emphasis upon the 
rational criterion, "Reality is not self-contradictory";^ but 
like Bosanquet he seeks to save as much as possible from the 
general wreck, and like Royce he has recourse to, and makes 
fundamental, the concept of purpose. Indeed, for our present 
purposes Taylor's system may be regarded as essentially a 
synthesis of the views of Bradley and Royce, and yet he makes 
his appeal to purpose with a difference. Royce always main- 
tains that reality, even in its most "external" aspects, is what is 
meant or purposed ; for Taylor, reality, at least at the outset 
of the investigation, is simply that with which our purposes are 
everywhere confronted, that "of which all purposes, each in its 
own way, must take account." * Thus while Royce identifies 
reality with the idea, the predicate of our judgment, Taylor 
identifies it with the subject of our judgment, as he interprets 
it, viz. with the bare immediacy of psychical experience. "The 
real is experience, and nothing but experience, and experience 

1 lb., pp. 387-8. 2 76., p. 378. 

3 Elements of Metaphysics, 1907, Bk. I, Ch. II, § 1. 
</6., Bk. II, Ch. I, §§ 1-3. 



160 THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE 

consists of psychical matter of fact." ^ And so, while Royce 
is led to the conception of an all-embracing rational order, really, 
if only fragmentarily, accessible to finite thought, Taylor 
gravitates away from the logical toward a one-sided psychologi- 
cal form of absolute idealism, and even in the direction of a 
mystical philosophy ^ of the Absolute as ''an individual ex- 
perience which apprehends the totality of existence as the har- 
monious embodiment of a single 'purpose,'" to which the 
nearest analogue presented by our own life is to be found in 
"the satisfied insight of personal love." ^ Taylor does not make 
much headway in the direction of mystical knowledge, however, 
and as a consequence he remains largely agnostic.^ At best 
he stands upon a mountain top in the wilderness of comparative 
agnosticism, and sees only from afar the promised land of mysti- 
cal insight which he himself may not enter. And as the sug- 
gestion of the mysticism was associated with the idea of 
reality as that which immediately confronts our purpose, so 
the agnosticism is associated with the idea of reality as the reali- 
zation of purpose. The Absolute is therefore regarded as "the 
final realization of our intellectual and practical needs," which 
"cannot possess either thought or will as such.'^ ^ 

The main criticisms passed upon Bradley are also valid as 
against this view of Taylor. The contradiction in the idea of an 
all-experience, or all-reality-including experience, which does 
not include all experience or reality as it is actually experienced, 
is only thinly veiled by the illegitimate notion of "degrees 
of reality." ® If reality is "immediate psychical fact," all "ap- 
pearances" are equally real. The "original sin" of Taylor's 
philosophy is the same "trail of the serpent" of subjectivism, 
or psychological idealism, which is over all the concrete ideaUsts, 
be they never so "objective." Tajdor thinks he gets rid of 
subjectivism by means of Avenarius's exposure of the "psy- 
chological fallacy of introjection" ; ^ but this simply liberates 
from the language of subjectivism by denying the reality of 

1 Elements of Metaphysics, 1907, Bk. I, Ch. II, § 4. 

2 lb., Bk. IV, Ch. VI, § 2. 3 76., Bk. II, Ch. I, § 4. 

* See Mind, N.S., Vol. XXII, 1913, p. 130. But cf. The Problem of Conduct, 
1901, Chs. VII and VIII. 

6 Elements of Metaphysics, Bk. IV, Ch. VI, §§ 1, 2. 

6 lb., Bk. II, Ch. III. 7 7b.^ Bk. II, Ch. I, § 8. 



THE NEWER ABSOLUTE IDEALISM 161 

the self, and this it does on the basis of what is, after all, merely 
an exposure of the fallacy underlying the rise of sl false idea of the 
self and of consciousness. Taylor himself virtually acknowl- 
edges the psychologism when he states that his view of reality 
and experience is practically that of Berkeley, save that it lays 
stress on 'Hhe purposive and selective aspect of experience." ^ 
Another damaging acknowledgment is the statement, ''Meta- 
physics adds nothing to our information, and yields no fresh 
springs of action." ^ 

Taylor's system as a whole may be regarded as a synthesis 
of three fundamental doctrines, viz. psychological idealism, 
voluntarism, and metaphysical monism. Of these three factors 
the only one which ought to be rejected without qualification 
is the psj^chological idealism. This psychologism, to be sure, 
infects both the voluntarism and the monism. On the one hand 
it transforms the voluntarism from the doctrine that what we 
experience depends ultimately, at least generally speaking, 
upon purpose, into the doctrine that what is real depends 
upon the purposes underlying its cognition. On the other 
hand it changes metaphysical monism from the doctrine that 
reality is in some sense one organic whole, into the doctrine 
that reality is one experience. We would maintain that volun- 
tarism, as applied not to what is real but to what is experience, 
and a moderate or critical metaphysical monism, apart from 
the contaminating influence of psychological idealism, are 
both highly defensible doctrines. These two of themselves, 
however, without psychological idealism, would never lead to 
absolute idealism. 



Mystical-Logical-Psychological Idealism 

Each of the various forms of absolute idealism hitherto 
examined may be regarded as implicitly or explicitly an at- 
tempted synthesis, on a monistic basis, of the psychological 
and logical types of idealism. We have still to examine a system 
in which there is attempted, although perhaps not altogether 
consciously, a synthesis of all three elemental types, the psycho- 
logical, the logical, and the mystical, and which may therefore 

1 lb., Bk. II, Ch. I, § 6. 2 lb., Bk. IV, Ch. VI, § 3. 

M 



162 THE PROBLEM OP KNOWLEDGE 

be called a mystical-logical-psychological idealism. As such 
it is also a synthesis of the essentials, from its own point of 
view, of the three dual combinations of the elemental types of 
idealism, as represented by Plotinus, Hegel, and Bergson. But 
what we are here especially interested in pointing out is that the 
result is a third main type of absolute idealism, the mystical, as 
contrasted with the intellectualistic and the voluntaristic types 
already discussed. Intellectualistic absolute idealism, as we 
saw, attached itself to Hegel ; the voluntaristic variety, while 
not departing from the main positions of Hegelianism, repro- 
duced certain features of the philosophy of Fichte ; the philos- 
opher whose system we are about to examine, while retaining 
much of Hegelian intellectualism and not entirely excluding 
the Fichtean voluntarism, adds to these a mystical element, 
reminding us of a certain phase of the thought of Schelling, only 
that in this later philosophy the mysticism is given a large place 
in the foundation of the entire structure. The result of this in- 
troduction of the mystical element is to produce an empirical 
development of absolutism. 

W. E. Hocking, the philosopher to whom we refer, holds that 
intellectualistic or rationalistic idealism, with its doctrine that 
whatever is is rational, is not so much mistaken as incomplete, 
and therefore unsatisfactory. Although furnishing the philo- 
sophical framework of a religion of reason, it fails to do the work 
of religion.^ Voluntaristic idealism, also, with its question, 
"What kind of world would best satisfy the requirements of 
our wills?" gives some important hints of what we have to 
expect of reality, and yet it can never determine in this way 
alone what kind of world we, in reality, have ; ^ the universe 
fulfils my will, but it is not definable as the fulfilment of my 
will ; independent reality is prior to our ideals, and, to be known, 
requires us to be passively receptive before we can actively 
select what is necessary for the realization of our purpose.^ 
Hence mysticism as "a practice of union with God, together 
with the theory of that practice" is offered as at once a supple- 
ment and a support to the existing forms of absolute idealism.'^ 
According to the intellectualistic absolute idealists from Hegel 

1 The Meaning of God in Human Experience, 1912, pp. vi-xi. 

« lb., p. 156. 3 /^.^ pp. 160-2. -» 76., pp. vi, xviii, xix. 



THE NEWER ABSOLUTE IDEALISM 163 

to Bosanquet, the ''Absolute Idea," or ''Concrete Universal," 
is discoverable through critical thought. In the opinion of 
Royce and the voluntaristic idealists it is discoverable through 
a definition and rationalization of purpose. But for Hocking, 
as a mystical idealist, the Absolute Idea, or Concrete Universal, 
is experienced in an immediate intuition. 

There is a sort of negative mysticism in the philosophy of 
Bradley, according to whom Absolute Reality, while not ade- 
quately knowable by the only method available to us, viz. 
rational criticism, is to be thought of as self -known in the Ab- 
solute Experience by an immediate intuition, comparable only 
to the mystical vision or to each human self's immediate aware- 
ness of a fragment of the realm of appearance. But while 
Bradley, as we have intimated, can only dimly view the prom- 
ised land from afar, Hocking, Joshua-like, would lead us boldly 
in, claiming that with " feeling " as "a way of knowing objects 
with one's Whole-idea" we are well able to enter into our prom- 
ised possession. 1 Psychological or subjective idealism having 
been already set up over against natural realism, and objective 
idealism having been framed by the bringing in of logical ideal- 
ism to be at once a support and a correction of subjective 
idealism, mysticism, with its mystical idealism in particular, 
is here brought in to perform a similar service in turn for objec- 
tive idealism. "A non-realism in regard to the surface of 
Nature" is accredited by the mystically-supported "Super- 
natural Realism," or "Social Realism," or "more truly . . . 
Realism of the Absolute — ■ not far removed from Absolute 
Idealism," to which that preliminary non-realism is held to 
be "the only way." ^ 

The question of immediate interest is whether this fusion of 
the three elemental types of idealism, which, taken separately, 
are, as we have seen, necessarily either fallacious or purely 
dogmatic, will result in an elimination or an accentuation of 
the fallaciousness and dogmatism. As one examines the 
mystical absolute idealism resulting from this new synthesis, 
he discovers that it is not left without further reasoning in its 
support, but is made to rest upon an ingenious dialectical argu- 
ment, which supports, and is at the same time supported by, 

1 Jb., p. 129 ; cf. pp. 282-90. ^ lb., p. 290. 



164 THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE 

what is presented as the result of an analysis of immediate, 
mystical cognition. In order to answer the question as to 
whether in this form also absolute ideaHsm is unduly dogmatic, 
we shall have to examine both the dialectic and the appeal to 
mystical intuition. 

The general path pursued by the dialectic may be indicated 
as follows : In sense-experience I have an immediate knowledge 
of external Nature ; but this would not be possible if I had not 
always at the same time an immediate knowledge of other 
mind ; therefore I have such knowledge. But this immediate 
knowledge of other mind would not be possible if I had not 
knowledge of other mind as wholly creative in its knowing, i.e. 
of Absolute Mind, or God ; therefore I have such knowledge of 
God. Examining this argument more closely, we find a transition 
from natural realism to subjective idealism, thence to an ob- 
jective personal — though not necessarily pluraHstic — idealism, 
and thence, finally, to what is, in its interpretation of the physical 
world, absolute idealism. Our task, then, will include, in the first 
place, an investigation of the question whether the transition 
at every step of the dialectic is legitimate and undogmatic, 
apart from any appeal to mysticism ; and in the second place 
an examination of the recourse to mystical intuition, in order to 
discover whether it removes or only aggravates the dogmatism 
of the system as a whole. 

The philosophy begins, then, upon the ground of natural 
reaHsm. It is admitted that we find Nature ready made, and 
obstinate in its independence. Hocking makes no distinction 
in this connection between primary and secondary qualities, 
unless it be to grant even greater objectivity to sensation than 
to relation. 1 But the position thus tentatively assumed is a 
dogmatic realism; as we shall maintain in a later chapter, a 
more critical reaHsm would recognize that while in practical hfe 
we find it necessary to assume the independent existence of 
physical energy undergoing transformation in space and time, 
we are not similarly required to posit the independence of color 
and other secondary qualities ; we simply do so through an 
uncritical process of association. If dogmatism in a philosophy 
is an evil, then this adoption of a dogmatic rather than a more 

^ The Meaning of God in Human Experience, 1912, pp. 282-6. 



THE NEWER ABSOLUTE IDEALISM 165 

critical realism as his starting-point is the fons et origo mail 
in Hocking's dialectical system. No universally necessary 
conclusion can be drawn by means of the most rigidly careful 
dialectic, if the thesis with which it begins is an unnecessary 
dogma. If it should be said, by way of rejoinder, that the 
intention is not to assume more than that the sense-qualities 
perceived are not dependent on the self, the distinct question 
as to the actual mode of their existence being left in abeyance 
until the final stage of the dialectic, our reply would be that 
that is the very element in natural realism to which, as will be 
seen from our critique of the new reahsm and our own con- 
structive statement, we most ob j ect . The belief is very common, 
we grant ; but for all that, in view of the various puzzles which 
emerge in connection with the study of sense-perception, normal 
and abnormal, it is none the less dogmatic.^ 

The weakness of his initial thesis seems to be felt by the author, 
for he elsewhere appeals to immediate feehng for its support. 
He makes plain his agreement with Fechner in the latter' s 
choice of the natural man's ''Day- view" of the world — the 
view that the world is constantly, even when unseen by any 
finite percipient, clothed with all the colors and other sense- 
quahties which it has for normal man in broad daylight — 
sirnply because he feels that ''it must be so" ; and his rejection, 
for a corresponding reason, of the opposite "Night- view." 2 

The second step in the dialectic, the first antithetical propo- 
sition, is hghtly touched upon. That subjective ideahsm is a 
position relatively justified is conceded rather than contended. 
That "physical experience ... is not so external but that it 
can at any moment be conceived internal to me" is accepted 
as something on which "ideahsm has sufficiently enlarged." ^ 
But as Hocking clearly recognizes, this subjective ideahsm is a 
necessary step in the dialectic pathway leading from "our 
natural reahsm" to "reahsm absolute." The dogmatism in this 
position, however, is clearly seen when one substitutes for the 
ambiguous expression "physical experience" the term which 
expresses what is really meant, viz. physical reality. That 

^ See especially Ch. XI, infra, and Ch. XIII, last paragraph. 
' The Meaning of God in Human Experience, 1912, pp. 468-73. 
» 76., p. 284. 



166 THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE 

physical reality is ''internal to me" cannot, as has been suffi- 
ciently shown in our critique of psychological idealism, be 
asserted as even relatively true without an unwarranted degree 
of dogmatism. 

Instead of going directly from subjective idealism, or solip- 
sism, to absolute monism, or ''solipsism of the Absolute," 
as is done by Royce, Hocking effects the synthesis between 
"our natural realism" and subjective idealism by asserting 
our inimediate awareness of "other mind." ^ He has ap- 
parently made a gain over Royce at this point, inasmuch as it 
seems less dogmatic to assert the existence and our im- 
mediate awareness of other mind than it is to claim that any 
apparently limited mind is in reality not only unlimited but the 
one and only mind. But unless Hocking's dialectic comes to 
the same thing in the end, it should be noted that we have here 
two different syntheses, each claiming to be logically necessary, 
and therefore the only possible one. As a matter of fact, how- 
ever, Hocking's dialectic may be viewed as presenting some- 
what easier transitions toward essentially the same conclusion, 
broadly speaking, as that reached more directly by Royce. It 
may be granted, then, that if natural realism and subjective 
idealism are both, as far as they go, valid — i.e. if what they 
need is only supplementation, not correction — Hocking's 
synthesis in the doctrine of immediate knowledge of other 
mind is well established. We must agree with him in his con- 
clusion, provided we have already admitted the original thesis 
and antithesis. But are we intellectually justified in granting 
him this initial advantage? On the contrary, we would claim 
that, as a matter of fact, both the thesis and the antithesis, 
both natural realism and subjective idealism^ are not simply 
inadequate and in need of supplementation in the course of 
the ensuing dialectic ; they are, as we have already seen in the 
case of subjective idealism, and as we shall see in the case of 
natural realism, open to more serious objection. It is often 
supposed that one must accept either natural realism or subjec- 
tive idealism, but that to accept the one is to reject the other. 
Hocking, as we have seen, accepts them both, and out of the 
apparent contradiction between them develops his dialectic. 

^ The Meaning of God in Human Experience, 1912, p. 287. 



THE NEWER ABSOLUTE IDEALISM 167 

In our opinion, however, of these supposed alternatives we 
should accept neither. There is, as we shall see in due time, a 
third possibility, by means of which we may avoid the natural 
dogmatism of the one without falling into the sophisticated 
absurdity of the other. ^ 

(If it be claimed, in support of Hocking's argument, that in 
the dialectic both natural realism and subjective idealism, 
being aufgehoben, are not carried over into the synthesis, but 
are left behind, the answer is that in that case the synthesis 
would be a mere hypothesis until verified. And if it be pointed 
out that religious mysticism is offered as a source of verification 
for the final synthesis, here the answer is that even if religious 
mysticism be regarded as valid for establishing the reality of 
God, it by no means follows that it is valid for establishing the 
reality of the ''Absolute" of absolute idealism. But nothing 
less than the establishing of that " Absolute " as real could give 
the required support to what we mean by the essential thing in 
natural realism and in subjective idealism, respectively.) 

It is a notable admission, moreover, when Hocking tells us 
that it was "like a shock" that this idea of the immediate 
awareness of other mind first came to him.^ ''That nature is 
always present to experience as known by an Other" is admit- 
tedly a "strange assertion," and by itself "unconvincing."^ 
When seen in the light of its further inescapable implications, 
it is felt to be "a great deal to claim." ^ What supports, then, 
in addition to the supposed dialectical proof just rejected, are 
brought forward to relieve the seeming dogmatism? 

The ultimate and one really important intuitional or empir- 
ical support — and it is one upon which much reliance is placed 
— is the rehgious experience of the mystic. But there are 

^ We do not mean to say that if natural realism and subjective idealism were 
to be analyzed into the separate beliefs held by the natural realist and the sub- 
jective idealist, as such respectively, we should be unable to accept any of them, 
or that the philosopher under consideration would accept all of them. For the 
purposes of our discussion at this point the essential thing in natural realism is 
the belief that secondary qualities exist independently of (are not produced by) the 
sensing activity of any human subject; and the essential thing in subjective idealism 
is the belief that in their primary qualities objects are thought-constructs, dependent 
for their existence upon the " relating " activity of the thinking subject. 

2 The Meaning of God in Human Experience, 1912, p. 265. 

3 lb., p. 278. 4 75.^ p. 294. 



168 THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE 

several minor supports, one of which is an inference from a 
report of analysis of social experience. "I am in thy soul. 
These things around me are in thy experience. They are 
thy own; when I touch them and move them I change 
thee. When I look on them I see what thou seest; when 
I listen I hear what thou hear est. I am in the great Room 
of thy soul ; and I experience thy very experience." ^ Here 
it would seem that, owing to the failure to develop a critical 
realism (such as we shall defend in a later chapter) instead 
of the natural realism rendered untenable by psychology, it is 
assumed that as two persons have immediate perceptual knowl- 
edge of a certain object, and as the object is not two, but one, 
they must each be in the soul of the other, or both in the same 
soul, as in a ''room." If now we get rid of this spatial concep- 
tion of consciousness, and view all conscious process as a crea- 
tive activity of the self, through which even the sense-qualities 
of the object are produced, though not the physical energy 
undergoing transformation in space and time, it becomes clear 
that two minds can, similarly and simultaneously, immediately 
experience the same thing, without these minds interpenetrat- 
ing each other. Each simply clothes one and the same physical 
object with similar sense-qualities, only each does it for himself 
alone. On Hocking's view as above expressed, if we were to 
take it at all literally, and in conjunction with his doctrine of 
the non-dependence of secondary qualities of physical objects 
upon the sensing subject, it would be difficult to explain how 
it is that when I view a colored object which is being perceived 
at the same time by a color-blind person, I see it not at all 
differently from the way in which it presents itself when I 
view it with another person of normal visual powers. In the 
former case at least it is not true that "I experience thy very 
experience." 

We may also note, in the discussion of supports offered for 
the doctrine of an immediate awareness of the experience of 
other mind, what is said, albeit rather incidentally, of something 
approaching mystical intuition in social experience. " Love and 
sympathy we often think of as feeling, in direct contrast to idea. 
It is clear, however, that they are both cognizances of another, 

* The Meaning of God in Human Experience, 1912, pp. 265-6. 



THE NEWER ABSOLUTE IDEALISM 169 

do in some way make the leap between my soul and the soul of 
some one not-myself , intend to put me in veritable rapport with 
what thought is passing there, the very tour de force of objectiv- 
ity.^' ^ Here we have a semi-mystical appeal to the cognitive 
nature of feeling. " Sympathy is objectivity of mind, and objec- 
tivity of mind is knowing." ^ In fact, all feeling, it is claimed, 
is a way of knowing objects. "All positive feeling . . . 
reaches its terminus in knowledge. All feeling means to instate 
some experience which is essentially cognitive; it is idea- 
apart-from-its-object tending to become idea-in-presence-of- 
its-object, which is 'cognizance,' or experiential knowledge."^ 
Even pleasure is '' a mode of being aware of the world." * This 
broad statement as to the cognitive value of feeling is made 
chiefly in order to prepare the way for the defence of the cogni- 
tive value of religious mysticism. '' It is not alone the specifically 
religious feeling with which the religious idea is bound up," 
it is claimed; although, it is added, "religion is the region 
where fact and value coincide, where there is no idea apart 
from feeling, as there is no feeling apart from idea." ^ 

This doctrine of the universal cognitive value of feeling 
contains an important, but easily exaggerated, truth. It is 
a well-known fact that the judgment of sympathetic intui- 
tion is often mistaken; and yet one's feelings often prove to 

1 lb., p. 135. 

2 lb. Of course it would be equivocation to infer from this that sympathy 
is knowing. If the statements are to be taken as universally acceptable, 
the first "objectivity" must be held to be less objective than the second. The 
one means directed toward reality; the other, grasping reality. 

3 lb., pp. 67-8. " lb., p. 128. 

* 76., pp. 136-7. It would be easy, in thus selecting and grouping together 
the references to cognition through feeling, to give a wrong impression of the 
system under consideration. It must not be supposed that Hocking's intention 
has been to use the appeal to mere feeling, as has been so often done by re- 
ligious writers, as a way of evading the cognitive puzzles of religious creeds. 
His contention is that an appeal to feeling does not escape theoretical problems, 
simply because feeling is itself a function of thought or idea. He has aimed to 
show that however much feeling may be involved in religion, we are bound to 
base our religion on metaphysics, i.e. on a cognitive relation to reality. It 
must not be forgotten that his philosophical doctrine is not a bare mystical 
idealism, but a mystical idealism subjected to the requirements of a pretty 
rigidly critical logical-psychological idealism. He has aimed to add rational 
thought to religious feeling, as well as to improve the content and certainty of 
dialectical philosophy by introducing the appeal to religious intuition. And 



170 THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE 

have been his best guide. In the Hght of the psychology of 
emotion the reason for this is clear.^ In a certain situation a 
certain action led, let us say, to a satisfactory experience ; and 
so an association has been established for the subject between 
that situation, that action, and that experience. A similar 
(largely identical) situation recurs. Because of the association 
established there is a tendency to repeat the same action. If 
the impulse to act is inhibited from immediate full expression, 
an emotional state will be induced in which the satisfactoriness 
of the original experience will be represented by a pleasant feel- 
ing-tone, readily interpreted as meaning the safeness of the 
action to which one is impelled. Now, because of a certain 
prohahility that because a certain action resulted satisfactorily 
in a previous situation, a similar action will result satisfactorily 
in a similar situation, feeling is often a most useful guide* 
But it cannot be said to be infallible ; at the best it is a source 
of suggestion of working hypotheses ; the final court of appeal 
must ever be the immediate experience resulting from acting 
on such hypotheses. In a word, feeling represents past ex- 
perience; it is, roughly speaking, an incipient reproduction of 
past experience ; hence, in so far as the future is to be like the 
past, feeling is a good guide. In so far, however, as the future 
is not to be like the past, feeling is not a good guide, and in no 
wise is it to be regarded as infallible. Hence the appeal to 
the undoubted value of sympathy for mutual understanding is 
far from sufficing to establish the fact of sympathy as a reason 
for asserting true knowledge of one mind by another in any 
particular instance ; much less does it prove that there is any 
immediate mutual knowledge between two sympathetic minds. 
We do not mean to say that Hocking would hold to the view 
that there is any such direct or at all infallible awareness of the 

while he enters with sympathetic understanding into the motives which have led 
to the "religion of feeling," with its "retirement of the intellect" (ib., Ch. IV), 
he hastens to state that he is " not wholly in accord with the conclusion to 
which these tendencies have led," and that he doubts if we "find substance 
enough in a religion of feeling." Pointing out that " religion has never as yet 
been able to take itself as a matter of feeling," he expresses the view that there 
is "some natural necessity whereby religion must try to put itself into terms of 
thought and to put its thought foremost " {ib., pp. 55-7, etc.). 

^ See J. Dewey, "The Significance of Emotions," Psychological Review, II, 
1895, pp. 13 ff. 



THE NEWER ABSOLUTE IDEALISM 171 

content of one's fellow-mortal's mind through sympathy ; but, 
without this, the reference to the cognitive nature of sympathy 
can afford the first synthesis in his dialectic — as he would 
perhaps admit — an only insignificant support. And yet, where 
feeling does work cognitively, we would say, it comes to be 
practically immediate, an intuition similar to that of immediate 
perception, although much more likely to be mistaken. 

But the most important support offered for this doctrine of 
our immediate awareness of (the content of) other mind is the 
argument that the idea of a social experience involves the actu- 
ality of such experience ^ — in other words, the ontological argu- 
ment for other mind. What Hocking evidently intends to say 
here is not merely that the idea depends upon a prior ex- 
perience,^ although that is admitted to be true ; ^ what he 
means is that just as normally ^^my idea of myself is at the 
same time an experience of myself," so ''my idea of Other Mind 
is at the same time an experience of Other Mind." ^ ''The 
idea of a social experience would not be possible, unless such 
an experience were actual." ^ "In any sense in which I can 
imagine, or think, or conceive an experience of Other Mind, in 
that same sense I have an experience of Other Mind, apart 
from which I should have no such idea." ^ Manifestly, then, 
on this ground we have immediate awareness of other mind, 
for we undoubtedly have the idea of other mind. 

But in order to enter into this doctrine with any degree of 
sympathetic understanding we must bear in mind Hocking's 
psychologically idealistic presuppositions. If, as he holds, the 
object is idea,^ and if an idea is "a piece of one's mind," ^ then 
the object as I know it is an organic part of my mind, and the 
object as other mind knows it is an organic part of other mind. 
So then, if other mind perceives an object which I perceive, we 
each perceive an organic part of the mind of the other ; we each 
have immediate inner experience of other mind, i.e. of its con- 

1 Hocking, op. ciL, p. 274. « lb., p. 277. 3 75.^ p. 152. 

* lb., p. 278. ^ lb., p. 274. Ub. 

' Hocking recognizes, as being at least relatively valid, the distinction between 
objects and ideas, when he says an idea is " what we think with, not what we 
think of" (ib., p. 79) ; but like others who accept psychological idealism as essen- 
tially vaUd, he seems not to take absolutely enough this important distinction. 

8/6., p. 79. 



172 THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE 

tent, and so, from this point of view, of its experience also. 
And this once estabUshed, we have at the same time a synthesis 
of natural realism and subjective ideaUsm, and a basis for ab- 
solute idealism. 

But besides depending upon the dogma of psychological ideal- 
ism, this conclusion requires the presupposition that we know 
that other mind exists and perceives the objects which we per- 
ceive. How do we know, especially if we adopt psychological 
idealism, that soHpsism is not true ? Is the idea of other mind 
anything more than a mere "paper currency" idea?^ It is to 
supply this Unk in the dialectical chain that Hocking introduces 
his ontological argument for other mind. We certainly have 
the idea of a social experience in connection with our perception 
of objects, but what is required is that this idea of other mind 
perceiving what we perceive should be transformed into knowl- 
edge. Hocking would argue here that if a solipsist were to 
deny that there is such a thing as a veritable social experience, 
he would at the same time be making use of the idea of a 
social experience, thereby virtually refuting himself, since the 
idea of a social experience is so unique that it could never 
have been derived otherwise than from an actual social ex- 
perience. 

Now suppose we grant the truth of this perhaps somewhat 
dogmatic assertion, that the idea of social experience could not 
have arisen without the experience, and therefore the reality, of 
social experience ; it seems certain enough that it did not arise 
without the experience. Even so, this does not necessarily 
mean an immediate inner experience of other mind, such as 
alone would satisfy the demands of Hocking's dialectic. It is 
true enough, we would contend, that we have a more or less 
intuitive (practically immediate) awareness of the presence of 
other mind within a complex of perceived objects, made up of 
an other reacting organism and its objects ; and upon such 
social experience we have built up our idea of other mind. But 
we have no reason to claim an immediate experience of other 
mind's immediate experience of its objects. Moreover, do we 
not sometimes have the idea (and knowledge of the existence) 
of other mind, without having **at the same time" an experience 

1 The Meaning of God in Human Experience, p. 278. 



THE NEWER ABSOLUTE IDEALISM 173 

of other mind ? It is of course true that we cannot have an 
idea of ourselves without having at the same time an experience 
of ourselves (as thinking) ; but we can and often do think of 
other mind without being able to assert the presence of other 
mind. Thus, when subjected to revision, the entire special 
significance which Hocking seemed to himself to find in the 
fact of social experience at once disappears. 

But let us proceed to an examination of the further progress 
of the dialectic. Let it be assumed that in all experience of 
physical objects we have immediate knowledge of other mind. 
The next important step in the argument is the setting up of 
the antithesis that apparently it cannot be other mind which 
we inwardly know in our own experience, because we are all 
empirical knowers ; ^ all finite experiencing subjects are alike 
passive to some extent in their experience; in thinking the 
same object they construct and use (practically speaking) the 
same ideas, the same predicates ; and so to that extent they have 
(not numerically, but qualitatively) the same experience. 
But the empirical subject-matter of judgment is passively 
received by all human knowers. How can we be sure that we 
share the same experience with other mind in that which we 
passively receive? Indeed, if passive there, must we not be 
isolated from other mind ? ^ Any self includes only that which 
it creates, and it creates only that which it comprehends. Our 
ideas, or predicates, and our empirically given subject-matter 
are united in one and the same object, so that if our experience 
of the given element is isolated, our experience of the object 
must be isolated also. This conclusion can be avoided, or, 
in other words, the thesis, as thus far developed, can be main- 
tained only if "the objectivity of nature" can be regarded as 
"an intentional communication of a Self wholly active." ^ 
The synthesis follows: "God is immediately known, and per- 
manently known, as the Other Mind which, in creating Nature 
is also creating me." ^ This, then, enables one to maintain the 
previous synthesis as valid. "It is through the knowledge of 
God that I am able to know men." ^ Thus, it is claimed, in our 
dialectical search for other mind, we come, "as by surprise," 

1 lb., p. 294. 2 75.^ p. 298. 

3 lb., p. 295. 4 7^,.^ p. 297. ^ 75, 



174 THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE 

upon the experience of the Absolute, or God, as Other Mind.^ 
But not as merely other. God is other than me and also other 
than my fellow-others; but since "the Self includes and is 
with its objects, in so far as it comprehends them, or is creating 
them," "God then actually does include me, in so far as I am 
dependent upon him ; does likewise include those fellow-Others, 
in so far as they also are his created work." ^ This, then, is the 
final synthesis — "Realism of the Absolute — not far removed 
from Absolute Idealism." ^ It is absolute idealism in its inter- 
pretation of the physical. 

Now this "surprising" outcome of the dialectic loses much 
of its impressiveness when we remember the more than dubious 
character of the immediately preceding thesis, for the defence 
of which this final synthesis has seemed necessary. In view of 
the fact that we finite minds are empirical knowers, we would 
grant that absolute idealism must be true, if we have immediate 
"inner" experience of other mind; and that it must be true 
that we have such experience ^/ natural realism and subjective 
idealism are both true. But that either natural realism or 
subjective idealism is true, we have found no reason to believe. 
It is not surprising, then, that Hocking seeks to give his final 
synthesis some further support. He employs here again, as in 
the defence of the thesis that we immediately experience other 
mind, the double appeal, first to the possibility of inferring the 
experience, and therefore the reality, from the idea ; and, second, 
to the cognitive value of the feeling experience. The former is, 
in the present connection, the "ontological argument"; the 
latter, the appeal to mystical assurance. As a matter of fact, 
however, these two arguments are presented as mutually com- 
plementary ; they tend to merge, the one with the other. What 
Hocking tries to show is that the idea of God, like the idea of 
other mind, "has something unique about it, which forbids the 
supposition that it is a 'mere idea. ' " ^ "The true idea of God 
is not one which can leave out either Nature or myself ; if my 
idea of God is real, it is real in experience." ^ An ontological 
argument may be stated in proof of the existence of Self, or 
Other Mind, or Nature, because each of these is reality experi- 

^ The Meaning of God in Human Experience, p. 301. 

2 Ih., p. 298. 3 76., p. 290. * lb., p. 307. " /^.^ p. 313. 



THE NEWER ABSOLUTE IDEALISM 175 

enced. Similarly the existence of God, as the Whole which 
includes Self, Nature, and Other Mind, can be proved by the 
argument : I have an idea of God, therefore I have an experi- 
ence of God.^ 

Hocking rejects all arguments for the existence of God, 
except the ontological argument, as futile. In idealistic fashion 
he declares "It is some leap from idea to reality that constitutes 
the essential . . . movement of the mind to God. . . . The 
ontological argument ... is the only proof of God." ^ To 
say ''Because the world is, God is," he regards as dogmatizing 
overmuch. Rather are we to say, ultimately, "Because the 
world is not, God is." ^ Beginning as a realist, and claiming to 
find the physical world unreal, he takes refuge, like the mystic, 
in the reality of God. Here we are reminded at once of Hegel 
and the mystics. HegeFs ontological argument can be under- 
stood only in connection with his dialectic. Starting with the 
reality of concrete experience, he finds in the concept of Being 
the most fundamental category involved in its interpretation. 
Then, finally, claiming to have shown by means of his dialectical 
logic that experienced Being must be interpreted ultimately 
as Absolute Spirit (and so, as God), he is able to turn about and 
say that whatever else may be affirmed of this Absolute, we 
may at least affirm its being; the Absolute, or God, is. But 
the Reality here asserted, it is to be remembered, is the "Con- 
crete Universal," the Absolute Idea which includes all the par- 
ticularity of immediate experience, and from which, of course, 
concrete existence can be readily deduced. Hocking's onto- 
logical argument has close affiliations with the Hegelian ; but 
the differences are important. Not only is there a large meas- 
ure of originality in the underlying dialectic, which proceeds 
from totality to spiritual unity, from reality as a whole, or the 
"Whole-idea," to other mind as Absolute Creative Spirit; 
what is more important for our present purpose is the way in 
which the work of Hegel is carried further in the transferring 
of the ontological argument from its formerly purely a priori to a 
distinctly empirical basis. God must be discovered in experi- 
ence, he claims. "No proof of God can be deductive. . . . 
The ontological argument in its true form is a report of experi- 

1 lb., p. 314. 2 lb., pp. 306-7. 3 76., p. 312. 



176 THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE 

ence." ^ The procedure is briefly as follows : There are some ideas 
which we could never have had without having had an experience, 
at least in the form of an intuitive feeling of the presence, of the 
reahties of which they are the ideas. With the application of 
this proposition to the world, to self, and to other mind, we have 
already dealt. Similarly, we could never have had the idea 
of Reality as a Whole, if we had not had an intuitive aware- 
ness or feeling of the presence of Reality as a Whole, In fact, 
the most primitive intuition of the infant consciousness is 
the Whole Idea, the feeling of the presence of Reality as a 
Whole. Ultimately, so it is claimed, we know that the world 
and self and other mind are real, because we know that the 
Whole is real ; and we know this because we have experienced, 
and do now experience, the Whole ; we have felt and feel its 
presence.^ 

Now this most primitive and fundamental of all intuitions, 
the intuition of the Whole, is the essential thing, it is claimed, 
in the religious experience of the mystic. The rehgious mystic 
is the individual whose specialty is the return from conscious- 
ness of the parts to consciousness of the Whole. ^ This con- 
sciousness is the essence of worship, and it is for this that the 
mystic seeks solitude and detachment from all particular things 
and persons. From the idea of the religious object, then, from 
the idea of Absolute Reality, Reality as a Whole, one can 
affirm its existence, because the idea itself is possible only through 
an experience — or, as Hocking would apparently say, as an 
experience — which is the experience, or immediate feeling, 
of the presence of Reality as a Whole. 

The same general argument is also stated in a form that 
reminds one more distinctly of Hegel and Bradley. We criti- 
cise our ideas (experiences) by means of others which we regard 
as more adequate. This must mean that there are always ideas, 
or there is at least one idea, which we regard as ultimate and 
beyond criticism. Such is the idea of the Whole. We criticise 
partial views by means of the idea of the Whole, and beyond this 
Whole-view there is nothing by means of which we may criticise 
it. It must therefore be regarded as the reality; that which 

* The Meaning of God in Human Experience, p. 312. 

2 lb., pp. 94-9, 233, 313-16, 408-11, etc. 3 76., pp. 405-12. 



THE NEWER ABSOLUTE IDEALISM 177 

cannot be criticised must be so ; and the Whole is therefore 
that which undoubtedly exists. What the content of this 
Whole is, is determined, as we have seen, by the dialectic. 

But not, it would seem, by the dialectic alone. The Whole- 
idea, or Whole-view, is the content of the mystic's experience ; 
and certain definite suggestions come from the mystical experi- 
ence as to the nature of that Whole, or religious Object. For- 
tunately for the idealist — or is it unfortunately ? — several 
of the most characteristic ideas of idealism seem to be confirmed 
in the characteristic experience of the mystic. Hocking recog- 
nizes some of the suggestions of the mystical experience as 
erroneous. ''The mystic," he says, "in reporting what he has 
experienced, has attributed to the objects of his experience 
some qualities which belong rather to his own inner state." 
"Is it not more probable," he asks, "that those words, 'one, 
immediate, ineffable,' which describe the Reality of the nega- 
tive metaphysics, are in their first intention descriptions of the 
mystic's inner experience? May it not be that those nega- 
tions which have passed for metaphysical definitions are in 
their original meaning rather confessions of mental obstruc- 
tion and difficulty, than assertions about the Absolute ? There 
is a wide difference between saying, 'My experience of Reality 
is ineffable' (passing my present powers of comprehension), 
and saying, 'Reality is ineffable' (without predicates)." ^ This 
is good criticism as far as it goes, but it ought to be applied 
further. There is equal justification for the view that the 
relative unreality or merely ideal existence of the physical 
and the finite, as well as the absolute perfection and timeless- 
ness and practically undifferentiated divinity of the Whole, 
together with other features of absolute idealism which seem 
to be confirmed by the mystical. experience, are mistaken appli- 
cations to the object of what is simply a transient modification 
of the subject.2 It cannot be maintained that Hocking's atti- 
tude toward religious mysticism is other than highly critical; 
and yet he fails to rule out these characteristic suggestions of 
extreme mysticism, in spite of their being at variance with 

1 lb., pp. 352-4. 

2 See G. A. Coe, "The Sources of the Mystical Revelation," Hibbert Journal, 
VI, 1908, pp. 359-72. 

N 



178 THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE 

ordinary conscious experience, and the reason is doubtless that 
they agree so well with the doctrines of absolute idealism. 

But even apart from the objections to be urged against the 
way in which mysticism is appealed to in support of absolute 
ideahsm, there is room for a still more fundamental criticism 
with regard to the estimate placed upon mysticism in Hock- 
ing's philosophy of religion; and this criticism is not without 
its bearing upon the idealistic theory here offered as resting 
upon a mystical basis. Religious experience tends to be identi- 
fied almost exclusively with the mystical phase of that experi- 
ence. It is recognized that adoration or worship is not the 
whole of Hfe, that the necessities of practical life require that 
one should turn from contemplation of the Whole to particular 
adjustments to the parts, and even that the practical life is 
greatly enriched as a result of the mystical experience ; but it 
ought to be more fully recognized that rehgious adjustment 
has place in this practical phase of life as truly as in the life of 
contemplation. Hocking calls attention to the normal alterna- 
tion between work and worship, but he gives the impression 
that the mere will to worship is sufficient by itself as a norma- 
tive principle to control this alternation. This, however, is 
manifestly a one-sided principle; it will produce and regulate 
only the movement from work to worship. For the movement 
from worship to work, instinct and the natural necessities of 
life have not always proved a suflftcient guide. The history of 
mysticism, especially in its quietistic and ascetic manifestations, 
shows the necessity of the will to worship being explicitly offset 
by the will to do a worthy work. 

Indeed our contention would be that, so far from the dis- 
tinctly mystical experience being the only phase of rehgious 
experience, it is not even its primary phase. Religion is pri- 
marily an adjustment to the religious Object for practical ends. 
Religious experience is primarily the practical experience im- 
mediately resulting from this adjustment. The mystical 
contemplation of the religious Object to which a practical 
adjustment has been successfully made is itself a religious experi- 
ence, but it is, originally, at least, a secondary experience, as 
compared with that of practical religion. To be sure, mystical 
religion may come to be more highly regarded than practical 



THE NEWER ABSOLUTE IDEALISM 179 

religion, and that with justice, especiallj^ in the case of the less 
rational religions. Moreover, without some measure of mysti- 
cal contemplation, rehgion will never come to have any great 
practical value. But practical rehgion is bound to develop in 
rationality, unless it is bound to disappear; and it is this ra- 
tional, practical rehgion which, if it can retain its vitaht}^, is of 
the greatest value, we would maintain, for rehgious knowledge. 
We know what the rehgious Object is, if we can know it at all, 
primarily by observing what that Object does when successful 
adjustment to it is made for some practical end. The results 
of rational and successful practical rehgion will be able to 
endm-e the test of mj^stical contemplation; but, as we have 
seen, what is suggested in the more extreme manifestations of 
mysticism will not always stand the test of criticism from the 
non-mystical but practical point of view. 

We are not concerned, then, to dispute the thesis that the 
idea of God, as it now exists in religion at its best, has come 
from an experience of God, and that since our experience of 
God involves the reahty of God, we can assert the existence of 
God on the basis of the best available idea of God. That if 
there is any conclusive argmnent for the existence of God, it is 
the empmcal argument, we would not for a moment deny. 
His position is not necessaril}' untenable, so far as we can say, 
who claims to know that God exists, because he is conscious of 
having had personal experience of the divine Reahty. And if 
what Hocking means is that when we have the right idea of 
God we shall know that God exists, because we cannot have 
the right idea of God except as it is based upon and legitimately 
derived from a genuine experience of God, we would concede 
that his position may very well be not onl}^ tenable, but inclu- 
sive of the most important insight that can come to the philos- 
opher of rehgion. 

But this is sunply the empirical argument ; to call it the 
ontological argument is likely to cause confusion. Probably it 
is because our philosopher still clings to the belief that the true 
idea of God can be obtained b}^ way of an idealistic interpre- 
tation of the physical world apart from the confirmation of 
this idea in the distinctly religious — or, as he would say, the 
mystical — experience, that he seeks to assimilate his thought 



180 THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE 

to the classical ontological argument. But if the empirical 
theistic argument be based primarily upon practical rather than 
upon the more extremely mystical religious experience, it will 
be found to give no support to the idealistic interpretation of 
the physical world. Indeed it may even be claimed that by 
the same sort of practical test the physical object, like the reli- 
gious, is found to be real. 

This empirical development of absolutism which we have been 
examining has undoubtedly resulted in a remarkable system of 
idealism, and one whose general human appeal is unusually 
powerful. Indeed, as the synthesis of mystical, logical, and psy- 
chological ideahsm, and as the representative of absolute idealism 
undertaking to do full justice to intellectualism, voluntarism, 
and mysticism, Hocking's philosophy may be regarded as, in 
principle, the consummation of the idealistic way of thinking. 
But, just because of its catholic inclusion of many variant forms 
of this doctrine, it is peculiarly exposed to attack. The fallacies 
and dogmatism of each elemental type of thought included are 
largely discoverable still in the final composite system.^ 

1 In this discussion of Hocking's idealism I have included, without the use 
of quotation marks, some excerpts from my article entitled, "Hocking's Phi- 
losophy of Religion: An Empirical Development of Absolutism," in the P/it7- 
osophical Review, XXIII, 1914, pp. 27-47. 



CHAPTER IX 

The Disintegration of Idealism 

Absolute idealism, especially in the form just examined, 
in which it undertakes to unite all the elemental types of 
idealistic thought, may well be regarded as the most highly 
integrated and consummate form of idealism. But it can 
scarcely be denied that the general system of absolute idealism 
has long been showing signs of disintegration. In Germany, 
indeed, it had all but disappeared a generation or less after the 
death of Hegel. Among English-speaking peoples the criti- 
cisms of Bradley and others have had their effect. Apart from 
the attempts at reconstruction considered in the preceding 
chapter, attempts which must be regarded as unsuccessful, a 
very large proportion of recent and contemporary idealistic 
thought in Europe and America has been following other lines 
than those of the classic absolutism. In general, there can be 
detected three different tendencies, one a movement, chiefly 
of pluralistic or '^personal idealism," tending to culminate in 
psychological or subjective idealism; another what may be 
called abstract idealism, leading finally in certain instances to a 
restoration of logical idealism; and a third, which may be 
called spiritual or religious idealism, and which tends to retain 
little more of philosophical idealism than was originally sug- 
gested by mystical modes of thought. This movement, or 
these movements, therefore, being a departure from the highly 
integrated absolute idealism, and tending in the direction of 
the separate elemental types again, we have chosen to charac- 
terize as the disintegration of idealism. 

We shall first examine the trend away from absolute ideal- 
ism (monistic logical-psychological idealism), through various 
forms of ''personal idealism" and approaches thereto, in the 
general direction of psychological or subjective idealism. The 
various views to be considered we shall group under the fol- 

181 



182 THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE 

lowing heads : monistic theistic idealism, semi-plumlistic 
theistic idealism, pluralistic theistic idealism, pluralistic semi- 
theistic idealism, and pluralistic atheistic idealism. The 
elimination of logical idealism, it may be remarked at once, is 
not increasingly conspicuous throughout these divisions taken 
in the above order; on the contrary it is most evident in the 
first and the third. It should also be explained that while 
some of the philosophers to be mentioned in this section have 
also been dealt with under dualistic epistemological realism, 
this is because of the fact that a position which regards physical 
reality as having no existence beyond the consciousness of the 
whole number of finite souls or soul-like individuals, may never- 
theless permit a realistic emphasis upon the independent reality 
of the physical from the standpoint of each finite individual. 

As an example of monistic theistic idealism which has de- 
parted from the typical absolute idealism by the practical 
elimination of the element of logical idealism, we shall cite the 
philosophy of Friedrich Paulsen. As compared with those of 
the group next to be examined, Paulsen is more nearly a purely 
psychological idealist, but not so nearly a pluralist. We may 
think of him as starting with a Humian empiricism and psycho- 
logical idealism. With Mill he reduces the physical to a per- 
manent possibility of sensation. With Kant he recognizes the 
a priori element in our knowledge, but this is not regarded as 
giving us universally valid propositions. ^ To the idealistic 
epistemological monism is opposed that indefinite realism of 
our practical knowledge, which saves us from solipsism. The 
super-individual reality is interpreted as psychical, however ; ^ 
first, with Spinoza and Fechner, it is held that there is a universal 
parallelism of the physical and the psychical, and then, the 
physical being everywhere regarded as mere phenomenon, 
Paulsen arrives at a panpsychism, fundamentally similar to 
that of Leibniz. 3 Like Schopenhauer and Lotze he claims that 
we get a clew to the nature of all reality from our own inner life, 
and like the former he inclines to voluntarism, as against intel- 
lectualism.^ But, following Lotze in his doctrine of the im- 
possibility of interaction, Paulsen likewise arrives at a monistic 

1 Introduction to Philosophy, Eng. Tr., 2d ed., 1907, pp. 398, 416. 

2 lb., p. 91. ' lb., pp. 92 ff. 4 lb., pp. 113-26. 



THE DISINTEGRATION OF IDEALISM 183 

conclusion,^ which, however, he takes more seriously than did 
Lotze, He frankly adopts pantheism as his religious point of 
view.^ The result is a philosophy which reacts from Lotze 
toward absolute idealism, and from absolute idealism toward 
Hume.^ In criticism of Paulsen's doctrine it will be sufficient 
to call attention once more to the inconceivability of all psychical 
realities and their phenomenal contents being included, without 
modification, in one conscious experience. The elimination of the 
element of logical idealism simply leaves this fundamental weak- 
ness of a metaphysically monistic psychologism all the more 
manifest. 

Before turning to a consideration of particular systems of 
idealistic philosophy which are more or less definitely pluralistic 
in character, some remarks on the nature_and basis of pluralistic 
idealism in general may be offered. |^ Monistic or absolute 
ideahsm may, a;g"iia 5 b ee n 4 n#m^;ted, be viewed as the result 
of a synthesis of either natural realism or logical idealism on 
the one side and a solipsistic, or at least a non-pluralistic, sub- 
jectivism on the other. Pluralistic or personal idealism, in 
its various forms, may similarly be regarded as resulting from 
a synthesis of either dualistic critical realism or logical idealism 
on the one side, and a pluralistic, or at least non-solipsistic, 
subjectivism on the other. 

A typical dialectical development in its bare outline is the 
following : We know reality ; we know only ideas ; therefore, 
reality is constituted of ideas. Now this synthesis may be 
interpreted in either monistic (at first solipsistic) fashion, as we 
have already seen ; or in several ways which lead to different 
types of pluralism, as follows : (a) Reality is made up of dif- 
ferent systems of ideas; we know reality; therefore, reality 
is constituted of our systems of ideas, (h) Reality is one sys- 
tem of ideas ; we know reality ; therefore, reality is our system 
of ideas, (c) Reality is made up of different systems of ideas ; 
we know reality, but not even total humanity knows it com- 
pletely ; therefore reality is constituted of ideas in God's con- 
sciousness, as well as in ours, whether or not there is any over- 

1 76., pp. 210-17. 2 76.^ pp. 232-43. 

2 A good monograph on Paulsen is Paul Fritzsch's Friedrich Paulsens philo- 
sophischer Standpunkt, Leipzig, 1910. 



184 THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE 

lapping or partial identification of God's consciousness and 
ours. This last view would cover both semi-plurahstic and 
pluralistic theistic idealism. The second coincides, as we shall 
see, with pluralistic semi-theistic idealism ; and the first, inter- 
preted as excluding any necessity of transcending the human, 
with pluralistic atheistic idealism. 

Semi-pluralistic theistic idealism is best represented by 
Lotze and his followers, although these thinkers are rather more 
appropriately classified as dualistic realists than as epistemo- 
logically monistic idealists. From the point of view of the 
individual subject, the doctrine is a realistic and dualistic 
one, but in relation to the whole number of selves and ''self- 
like" beings, the physical world is construed in idealistic fashion ; 
the world of nature in space and time is interpreted as thought- 
construct. Moreover, the idealistic phase of the philosophy 
is accentuated by the metaphysical monism, according to which^ 
as we have seen above, in order to avoid the supposed absurdity 
of interaction all beings are held to be parts of the one Ultimate 
Reality, or ''World-Ground," interpreted after the analogy of 
the human conscious self. And yet, in order to maintain suffi- 
cient human freedom for the purposes of moral responsibility, 
a certain independence of human selves, in relation to the Abso- 
lute, is affirmed. Thus the metaphysical monism is not made 
thoroughgoing, but amounts to a semi-pluralism. The World- 
Ground, however, is identified with the God of religion. The 
criticisms of this view have been indicated in connection with 
the discussion in the third chapter above. 

If we were concerned to discuss at all completely the most 
important historical representatives of each of the divisions of 
idealistic philosophy here recognized, we should be obliged to 
give careful consideration to the system of Leibniz in connec- 
tion with pluralistic theistic idealism. As we are primarily 
interested, however, in the criticism of views held by contem- 
porary thinkers, or that have been very recently held and that 
have not been so repeatedly criticised as have the pre-Kantian 
philosophers, we shall touch but lightly upon the pluralism and 
theism of this well-known philosophy of monads. Like the 
philosophy of Lotze, who was his follower to some extent, the 
system of Leibniz seems at once a dualistic realism (in relation 



THE DISINTEGRATION OF IDEALISM 185 

to the individual) and an idealistic epistemological monism 
with reference to the physical (in relation to the more or less 
fully conscious monads). The theism and creationism, how- 
ever, which Leibniz thought necessary to account for the 
appearance (supposedly false) of interaction, are themselves 
incompatible with this same extremely pluralistic dogma of 
non-interaction.^ 

We shall also pass by with bare mention in this connection 
the philosophy of A. Seth Pringle-Pattison, whose Hegelianism 
and Personality was early influential in leading English ideal- 
ists away from the metaphysical monism of absolute idealism 
in the direction of the pluralism of personal idealism. His 
system as a whole is more appropriately considered, as above, 
in connection with epistemological dualism and realism. As 
a very good illustration of pluralistic theistic idealism, how- 
ever, we may take up for somewhat detailed notice the system 
of James Ward, a philosopher who has been deeply influenced 
by Lotze, but who has not adhered so closely to his master's 
procedure and conclusions as have many of Lotze's disciples in 
England and especially in America. 

The earlier of Ward's two main philosophical works is an 
attack upon naturalism from the point of view of psychological 
idealism. From the standpoint of naturalism the world of 
things felt and seen is epiphenomenal, the real world being a 
world of material atoms and physical forces. But while admit- 
ting the phenomenal character of the physical world of immedi- 
ate experience. Ward claims that the supposed actualities of the 
physicist are simply conceptions, 'thoughts and not things, 
ideas existing solely for the minds of physicists." His main 
insistence, however, is that phenomenal reality, like concept- 
construction, presupposes minds that perceive it, and from 
which it cannot be separated. ''An experience that is not 
owned is a contradiction." ^ Thus Ward succeeds in the effort 
to maintain an epistemological monism, but it is at the cost of 
entangling himself in the meshes of a psychological or subjective 
idealism from which he is never able fully to extricate himself. 

But what he is really concerned to get rid of is the dualism 
of mind and matter, out of which, as it seems to him, agnosticism 

1 Naturalism and Agnosticism, 1899, Vol. II, pp. 100-11. 



186 THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE 

has arisen. He undertakes to show that this duahsm is the 
outcome of two fallacious processes of reasoning. In the first 
place, through intersubjective intercourse the false notion of a 
transsubjective object arises. What is independent of L, M, 
and N individually is fallaciously supposed, says Ward, to be 
for that reason independent of them collectively. Thus physics 
arises, treating objects as ' 'transsubjective," existing apart 
from all experiencing subjects. But the truth is that we can- 
not conceive an object as existing apart from all subjects, 
without conceiving it; and this, according to Ward, implies that 
it cannot exist apart from a thinking or experiencing subject. ^ 
The realistic interpretation of the entities of physics arrived 
at by the process of thought criticised by Ward would indeed be 
fallaciously based if the argument were taken as conclusive by 
itself ; but it might very well be true, for all that. And as for 
Ward's own argument for idealism, it is a clear case of the fal- 
lacy of reasoning from the egocentric predicament. But the 
second fallacy underlying dualism according to Ward is the 
fallacy of introjection as detected and described by Avenarius.^ 
This leads to the psychological point of view as dealing with 
''inner" states, as opposed to the external things of the physical 
world. 

Instead of any such dualism of mental and material. Ward 
offers spiritualistic monism. The true problem, he claims, is 
not how two minds can know one object, but how each of two 
minds comes to think of certain objects of its own experience as 
identical with those of the other's experience. This is accom- 
plished, it is claimed, by each individual making a distinction 
between his individual (unshared) experience and his "univer- 
sal" experience, the like of which exists for others also. The 
subject of this "universal" experience and that of those experi- 
ences which are purely individual are nevertheless one and the 
same subject.^ But in criticism of this it is to be pointed out 
that there is more in what we call physical reality than belongs 
to universal immediate experience. And if we remember the 
fallacious character of the inference of idealism from the ego- 
centric predicament, we shall be unable to infer that all that 

1 Naturalism and Agnosticism, 1899, Vol. II, p. 171. 

2 lb., p. 172 ; V. Ch. VI, supra. 3 lb., p. 197. 



THE DISINTEGRATION OF IDEALISM 187 

can be mediately experienced, thought of, is dependent upon 
the subject and the process of thought. 

But what is thus far simply a strongly pluraHstic personal 
ideahsm, highly subjective in its doctrine of the physical world, 
is modified by the introduction of theism, not only as something 
desired for its own sake, but also as a means of relieving the 
pluraHsm and subjectivism of the system.^ The world is now 
viewed as the object of God's experience. This theism, it 
should be noted, is not regarded as demonstrable ; the best 
that can be done is to show that it is a rational faith. Thus 
we have a less aggravated dogmatism than that displayed by 
some idealists; and yet it is dogmatic from the outset in 
affirming, on the basis of a fallacious inference, that there 
can be no physical reality, save as object for an experiencing 
subject. 

Hastings Rashdall regards as valid the process of thought 
by which one arrives at psychological idealism. Solipsism is 
avoided by the doctrine of a plurality of selves, in dependence 
upon which things exist. The necessity of supposing, on the 
basis of geology, for example, that things have existed when 
there was no human self on which they might depend, proves 
that there must be some other conscious Being, presumably 
God, for whom and in dependence upon whom they had and 
continue to have their existence. Thus, it is claimed, theism 
rests upon ideahsm, and the relation of God to man is conceived 
to be that of Creator to creature.^ And so the necessity of the 
idea of God, or some such idea, in order to get one out of the 
more obvious difficulties of an unnecessary subjectivism, is 
made, strangely enough, a proof of the existence of God ! What 
we have here is evidently, in essentials, a return to Berkeleian 
psychological ideahsm, and further evidence that the move- 
ment from absolute idealism to personal idealism is part of 
the process of the disintegration of idealism into its elements. 
Indeed it sounds like a confession, although not intended as 
such, when the author says, '^It is for the most part only by a 
considerable course of habituation, extending over some years, 

^ The Realm of Ends, 1911, passim.. 

2 " Personality, Human and Divine," in Personal Idealism, edited by H. 
Sturt, 1902 ; Philosophy and Religion, 1910, Chs. I and II. 



188 THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE 

that a man succeeds in thinking himself lato the ideaUstic view 
of the universe." ^ 

The ''humanism" of F. C. S. Schiller, which he calls the 
true ideahsm and the true reahsm, is after all simply personal 
idealism falling back into a quite extreme form of psychologism. 
The position is defined as ''merely the perception that the 
philosophic problem concerns human beings striving to com- 
prehend a world of human experience by the resources of human 
minds." ^ '^It does not deny what is popularly described as 
the external world. ... It insists only that the 'external 
world' of reahsm is still dependent on human experience."^ 
Common-sense realism, or pragmatic realism, as Schiller says 
it may be called, is indorsed in view of its working for almost 
every purpose.* But its pragmatic assertions must not, we are 
reminded, be taken as metaphysical dogmas.^ The reahty 
we predicate is never "extra-mental," ^ and reahsm as a denial 
that experience and reahty belong together is a metaphysic for 
which there neither is nor can be any possible evidence.^ And 
so, while Schiller says, on occasion, that we are not the sole agents 
in the world, ^ and that while reahty is experience, it is not 
hmited to our experience,^ he does not logically escape solipsism. 
The real world, he asserts, is a selection from the totahty of 
existence, that is, from the whole of the self's experience. ^° And 
more recently he has made such statements as the following: 
"There is nothing theoretically absurd or untenable about 
solipsism. ... It is more consistent than the vulgar view 
that interprets sohpsistically dreams alone. But the sohpsist 
would have to adapt his theory to his practice. . . . Asohpsism 
so conceived would seem to be harmless. It would make no 
practical difference." ^^ 

Charles Renouvier, while a theistic personal idealist, and 
a creationist, did not, as does Rashdall, make his theism depend 
upon his ideahsm. ^2 Qf the two contrary hypotheses, creation 
and an infinite succession of unoriginated phenomena, he 
chooses the former on the ground that the latter involves the 

I Philosophy and Religion, p. 19. ^ Studies in Humanism, 1907, p. 12. 
8 76., p. 13. " 76., p. 459. ^ 75.^ p. 46I. e 75.^ p. 432. 

7 76., p. 483. 8 76., p. 446. » 76., pp. 463^. 10 76., pp. 470, 484. 

II Mind, N.S., XVIII, 1909, p. 182. 12 7,^ personnalisme, 1903, passim. 



THE DISINTEGRATION OF IDEALISM 189 

self -contradictory notion of an actual infinite. The hypothesis 
of creation, it is held, calls for a creative will and personality. 
Renouvier then turns to the problem of knowledge, and fall- 
ing a victim to the fallacy of reasoning from the egocentric pre- 
dicament, claims that an absolutely subjective idealism, while 
practically inadmissible, is logically irrefutable. We escape, 
and are able to affirm the reality of the external world only as a 
belief and moral postulate. But even this belief and this postu- 
late, as thought, are relative, and do not take us beyond a 
purely phenomenal nature of things. All things then must be 
regarded as always existing only as objects for personalities. 
In this personal idealism we have a return to the most subjective 
type of psychological idealism. 

But personal idealism is not necessarily theistic. It can be 
frankly atheistic, or transitional between theism and a non- 
theistic position. As representing this pluralistic, semi-theistic 
idealism, or personal idealism with a vanishing theism, we may 
cite the philosophy of G. H. Howison. In this thinker's judg- 
ment all existence is made up of minds, together with the items 
and order of their experience.^ On the principle that the real 
is the rational and the rational is the real, the existence of the 
spirit is to be identified with its self-definition in rational 
thought. Here, it will be noted, we have strongly present the 
element of logical idealism, in combination with the psychologi- 
cal idealism. Matter is experience, arising from the reaction 
of primal freedom upon the negating limit, or ''check," and 
organized by a priori mind. The self, then, defines itself, as 
different from every other self, including the Supreme Instance, 
or God. 't Hence, it is inferred, the self, other selves, and God, 
exist. Or, more explicitly, the idea of every self and the idea 
of God are inseparably connected, so that if any self exists, then 
God must exist. 2 But the self necessarily defines itself as the 
free cause of its own conscious acts ; therefore it must be not 
only free, but uncreated ; for that which is created cannot be 
free. (This follows from the absolute determinism of Howi- 
son's rationalistic idealism. But one might raise the question 

^ The Limits of Evolution and Other Essays, 1901, passim; cf. also "Comments 
by Professor Howison" in Royce's The Conception of God, 1897, pp. 81-128. 
* The Limits of Evolution, p. 359. 



190 THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE 

whether even a spirit whose Hfe was absolutely predetermined 
could be regarded as free, whether created or not.) 

In this view, however, apart from the obvious rationalistic 
dogmatism of proceeding from a priori definition to the asser- 
tion of fact, what we have is not a genuine theism. God is 
defined as the Perfect Being, the supreme instance in the repub- 
hc of God, but the God of this system is not the God of practical 
religion. He does nothing for finite spirits. It is maintained 
that while, as the ideal Being, he is the final cause of every- 
thing, he is the eflacient cause of nothing. But why, we would 
ask, should one be concerned to affirm that such a God is an 
ideal being? Would not an ideal answer the purposes quite as 
well? Thus the theism appears to be, in this philosophy, a 
vanishing quantity. 

The one further form of personal idealism demanding our 
attention is the pluralistic atheistic idealism of which J. M. E. 
McTaggart is perhaps the best representative. McTaggart 
claims to be the true follower and interpreter of the philosophy 
of Hegel. ^ Starting with the concept and experienced fact of 
being, he claims to be able to arrive, by a purely a priori dia- 
lectical process, at a final metaphysical knowledge of the Abso- 
lute, not as one timeless Individual, but as a society of eternal 
individual persons. The last step in this dialectic is the transi- 
tion from the concept of life to that of (social) consciousness. 
Life is that the w^hole of which is in each part, while at the 
same time it is the whole of which they are the parts. To 
solve this antithesis, it is necessary to go beyond material 
reality and to introduce the concept of consciousness in its 
social aspect. If A, B, and C are individuals who know each 
other, then A, as conscious of the whole group, contains A, B, 
and C ; and the same is true of each of the others. Hence 
''Being" must ultimately be interpreted, according to McTag- 
gart, as a society of mutually known and knowing persons. 

In criticising this philosophy we must first attack the argu- 
ment by which it is supported, and then show the difficulties 
inherent in the view itself. In the first place the concept of 
life is incorrectly apprehended. It is life as a formative prin- 

^ Studies in Hegelian Cosmology, 1901 ; Commentary on Hegel's Logic, 1910, 
especially §§ 10-18. 



THE DISINTEGRATION OF IDEALISM 191 

ciple which acts or "is present" in each part of the hving 
organism; but it is the whole Hving organism which includes 
the various parts. Here there is no unresolved antithesis to 
drive one on to a higher category. There is also a confusion 
in the explication of the concept of social consciousness. In 
consciousness of a social whole by one of its parts, it is not the 
whole as a reality that is in the part, but an idea or representa- 
tion of the whole which is ''in" the consciousness of one of the 
parts. Thus we see that not only is there no dialectical problem 
in connection with life, but even if there were, the concept of 
social consciousness would not be its solution. And indeed it 
may be objected against McTaggart's whole dialectical pro- 
cedure, that in refusing to depend upon experience for the 
development of either the antitheses or the higher syntheses he 
forfeits the logical right to call his system a philosophy of 
reality. That he should have fallen a victim to abstractionism, 
or fallacy, or dogmatism, was inevitable; that he has wholly 
escaped any one of them appears doubtful. 

But objections may be urged against McTaggart^s pluralis- 
tic idealism itself. If reality as a whole is a society of un- 
created and eternal selves, in whose consciousness material 
reality exists as ideas, or thought-created content, what kind 
of existence has what is not known by any of these persons ? ^ 
McTaggart seems to have at first been inclined to favor, but 
finally to have rejected, the idea that every mind, as a timeless 
noumenon, is omniscient. But in order that the world of 
science extending beyond the consciousness of any of the 
society of human selves should not be regarded as a delusion, 
while, on the other hand, a reahstic view is avoided, McTag- 
gart is now understood to favor the view that human selves 
are not the only fundamental differentiations of the Absolute 
Society ; there are other self -like beings which are also eternal 
members of the social whole, and for whose consciousness, pre- 
sumably, matter exists more or less explicitly as idea. But, 
even from the idealistic point of view, as Rashdall points out,^ 
the sole recommendation of this philosophy is that it makes 
possible an idealism without theism, while from the point of 
view of the critic of idealism it affords a further evidence of the 

1 Cf. H. Rashdall, Philosophy and Religion, pp. 123 ff, 2 75,^ p. 125. 



192 THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE 

disintegrated state of contemporary idealism. In order to 
avoid a confession of the inherent subjectivism of personal 
idealism, one must either posit the mind of God as a carry-all 
for things as ideas, or oscillate in a way to be described later, 
between subjectivism and abstractionism, or else attribute 
individual consciousness to a sufficient number of beings to have 
immediate awareness of all the reality which physical science 
is obliged to postulate. It surely looks as if the dialectic of 
idealistic thought were a dialectic of error. Its first erroneous 
inference places it in a false position, which can be defended 
only by further assumptions which make the system as a whole 
more and more dogmatic as it proceeds. As for theism, it 
may surely be regarded as a defensible position that it finds its 
truest foundation in religious experience, and does not either 
stand or fall with idealism. 

But besides this personal idealism, with its tendency to 
return to elemental psychological idealism, there are in con- 
temporary idealism several varieties of doctrine which may be 
grouped together under the designation abstract idealism, and 
most of which tend toward a return to the elemental type 
which we called logical idealism. By abstract idealism in 
general we mean the definition of reality, especially physical 
reality, in terms of idea in some sense of that word, but in 
such a way that its being both real and idea depends upon 
some condition which either is not, or is not known to be, 
actual. Of this abstract idealism we shall consider four main 
varieties, viz. the psychological-positivistic, the critical-posi- 
tivistic, the critical-transcendental, and the logical-transcend- 
ental. The significance of these expressions will be shown in 
connection with the exposition and critique of the particular 
systems selected for examination. 

Let us consider first the psychological-positivistic type of 
abstract idealism, as represented by the views of G. S. FuUer- 
ton in 1904. The word '' existence" according to this philos- 
opher, has more than one meaning ; it may refer to intuitive 
presence in consciousness, or to presence in a system of experi- 
ences, potential or actual.^ Thus the unperceived table exists 
in a system of potential experiences. But what, it may be 

1 A System of Metaphysics, 1904, pp. 122-3. 



THE DISINTEGRATION OF IDEALISM 193 

asked, is the present actuality of a potential experience? 
What we have here is very evidently an abstract psychological 
ideahsm. We are asked to accept the dogmci of the present 
existence of an experience which is not at present, strictly 
speaking, an experience at all. In essential agreement with 
Fullerton's doctrine is Paulsen's statement that the physical 
sciences deal with the world of possible percepts, which differ 
from actual percepts in that they are permanent, and subject 
to the laws of the phj^sical sciences.^ 

As representing the critical-positivistic type of abstract 
idealism we shall take the school of H. Cohen ; but, as repre- 
senting the transition from the Kantian dualism to this form 
of abstract idealism, we shall first deal with the neo-Kantians, 
F. A. Lange and Otto Liebmann. Ever since the beginning of 
the "Back to Kant" movement, in which, while Liebmann 
was perhaps the most typical representative, Lange was prob- 
ably the most influential, there has been a strong tendency to 
emphasize the idealistic elements of Kant's own doctrine, and 
to treat the dualistic and agnostic features of his philosophy 
as entirely secondary and unessential. Lange concedes to the 
materialist that all that takes place in the material world, in- 
cluding brain-processes and outward actions of men and ani- 
mals, is to be scientifically explained according to the principles 
of mechanics; but he urges that if our sensations and ideas 
are to be viewed as products of material processes, it must at 
the same time be remembered that these and all other material 
processes can ultimately be interpreted only as objects of 
consciousness, dependent ever, as to what they are, upon the 
activity of thought according to its a priori principles.^ Lange 
claims to have changed his views under the influence of H. 
Cohen, thus coming to regard the thing-in-itself as a mere 
idea of a limit to human experience.^ He does not, however, 
consistently follow out this non-dualistic epistemology. In- 
deed, throughout the greater part of his discussion, he remains 
simply a very agnostic epistemological dualist. He says we 
do not know whether the thing-in-itself exists or not ^ — in 

1 Introduction to Philosophy, Eng. Tr., pp. 375-6. 
^History of Materialism, 1865, Eng. Tr., Vol. II, pp. 227, etc. 
3 lb.. Vol. II, pp. 216, 234. " lb., II, p. 217. 

o 



194 THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE 

itself a departure from Cohen's doctrine — but in the main he 
seems to assume that it does exist, being concerned only to 
deny knowledge of what it is. Thus he says the whole objec- 
tive world is not absolute objectivity, but only objectivity^ for 
men and similar beings, while behind the phenomenal world 
the absolute nature of things, the thing-in-itself, is veiled in 
impenetrable darkness.^ Perhaps the most decisive passage, 
however, is that in which Lange says that we do not know 
even ourselves as we are in ourselves, but only as we appear to 
ourselves ; ^ reality can scarcely be denied to the knowing self. 
And yet Lange seems also at several points in his discussion 
to be actually on the side of non-dualistic or idealistic neo- 
Kantianism. The declaration that while delusive appearance 
is mere phenomenon for the individual, reality is also simply 
phenomenon for the species,^ suggests an easy transition from 
agnostic realism to an idealistic monistic epistemology. The 
fact is, or seems to be, that Lange carries his agnosticism so 
far that from time to time he turns about upon the reality 
previously set up in opposition to appearance, and reduces it to 
the mere idea by means of which it was posited. Thus he 
declares that the last cause of all phenomena is unknown, and 
that the very idea of it is due to the purely subjective antith- 
esis between sense and a priori thought.^ Precisely because 
we recognize the phenomenal world as a product of our organi- 
zation, we must be able, he contends, to assume a world inde- 
pendent of our forms of knowledge ; and yet this assumption, 
he holds, is merely the ultimate consequence of the use of the 
understanding in judging of what is given us.^ Indeed, even 
the Kantian distinction between phenomenon and thing-in- 
itself, Lange finally maintains, may be simply a product of 
our mental organization.^ According to this logical culmina- 
tion of critical agnosticism, it becomes doubtful whether or not 
we should accept as valid the fundamental principle of that 
critical agnosticism itself — a beautiful instance of a philoso- 

^ History of Materialism, 1865, Eng. Tr., II, p. 156. Cf. "Our things are 
different from things in themselves," p. 188, and also pp. 218, 224, 232, 234. 

2 lb., II, pp. 230-1. 3 lb., Vol. Ill, p. 336. 

* lb., Vol. II, p. 218. B 75.^ 11^ p. 227. 

' See Ellisen, Biographic Lange' s, pp. 258 ff., referred to by Hofifding, A Brief 
History of Modern Philosophy, Eng. Tr., p. 290. 



THE DISINTEGRATION OF IDEALISM 195 

phy's self -refutation. In any case, however, whether as duahst 
or as ideaUstic monist, Lange's opposition to reahstic episte- 
mological monism is unmistakable. ''A reality," he says, 
''such as man imagines to himself, and as he yearns after 
when this imagination is dispelled, an existence absolutely 
fixed and independent of us while it is yet known by us — 
such a realit}^ does not and cannot exist." ^ 

Otto Liebmann is more clear-cut than Lange in his rejec- 
tion of the Kantian epistemological dualism, but he does not 
make so explicit as do Cohen and his followers those implica- 
tions of neo-Kantianism which convict it of abstractionism. 
He contends 2 that Fichte's ''Absolute Ego," ScheUing's "Ab- 
solute," and Hegel's "Absolute Spirit" or "Absolute Reason," 
as truly as the "independent reals" of Herbart and the "Will" 
of Schopenhauer, are all simply disguised forms of the Kantian 
thing-in-itself, which in all its forms and under all its dis- 
guises is to be rejected as the product of a vain attempt on the 
part of the abstract intellect to think the unthinkable, and 
thereby to find the answer to an unanswerable question. We 
must return, he claims, from all post-Kantian metaphysics of 
the transcendent to the position of Kant, eliminating only 
Kant's erroneous notion of the thing-in-itself, as being not 
even so much as an empty concept, but absolutely no concept 
at all. It is like what a knife would be, which lacked both blade 
and handle. It is like that of which Luther said that we ought 
not to know it and therefore ought not to wish to know it. 

It would not be difficult to show that the implications of 
Liebmann's idealism would lead toward an abstract view of 
the content of the Kantian "possible experience." This is 
brought out with sufficient clearness in the works of the "Mar- 
burg School" — H. Cohen, P. Natorp, E. Cassirer, and others 
— the members of which differ from Liebmann perhaps most 
conspicuously in contending that, when Kant's own doctrine 
is correctly interpreted, the thing-in-itself is seen to be simply 
a mark placed upon the limit of human experience and knowl- 
edge. The aim of these neo-Kantians of the Marburg school 
has been to develop the Kantian critique of pure reason into a 

1 Op. ciL, Vol. Ill, p. 336. 

* Kant und die Epigonen, first published in 1865 ; republished in 1912. 



196 THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE 

rationalistic, but positivistic rather than metaphysical, philos- 
ophy of reality. To this end the Kantian distinction between 
pure intuition and pure thought has to be obliterated. 
"Givenness" is to be interpreted as produced in toto by a priori 
thought, on the ground that ''so far as we recognize particu- 
larity, it must be producible in pure thought." ^ The central 
task of the critical philosophy being, according to these inter- 
preters, the proof of the objective validity of our a priori knowl- 
edge,2 it is clear that the Kantian doctrine of the unknowable 
'Hhing-in-itself" must be relieved of its agnostic implications. 
This is accomplished when one remembers that that thing-in- 
itself is itself a thought-construct, representing symbolically the 
limits of scientific observation and knowledge.^ Thus it is 
claimed that philosophy lays the basis for the objective validity 
of the exact sciences.* Moreover, an approximately Hegehan, 
although ostensibly anti-metaphysical, result is obtained by 
way of an essentially Kantian critical method.^ 

This rationalistic positivism achieves the appearance of 
simplicity by the obliteration of troublesome, but important, 
distinctions. This is true not only in the reduction of the 
''given" to the level of that which is constructed by a pnon 
thought. Cassirer goes further and regards the distinction 
between "fact" and hypothesis as illusory.^ Consciousness 
and its object are reported as essentially similar,^ but it must 
not be supposed that this means a lapse into psychologism. 
What we have is logism rather; the object is in its entirety a 
thought-construct, and the subject, or consciousness, or science, 
is also simply a reconstruction, or more comprehensive con- 
struction of the same object.^ Indeed, psychology, for this 

1 H. Cohen, Logik der reinen Erkenntnis, 1902, p. 144. Cf. Natorp, Di 
logischen Grundlagen der exakten Wissenschaften, 1910, and Cassirer, Das Erkennt- 
nisproblem, Vol. II, p. 555, where this characteristic statement occurs: "The 
original separation of intuition and concept disappears more and more into a 
purely logical correlation." 

2 Cassirer, op. ciL, II, p. 589. 3 76., pp. 598, 603-7, 612. 
* Cohen, op. cit., p. 511 ; Natorp, op. cit., passim. 

^ See E. von Aster, " Neukantianismus und Hegelianismus " in Munchener 
philosophische Abhandlungen, 1912, and Natorp, Kant und die Marburger Schule, 
1912. 

^ Substanzbegriff und Funktionsbegriff, Ch. 6. ' lb. 

P Cohen, op. cit., p. 366, etc. 



THE DISINTEGRATION OF IDEALISM 197 

school, consists in the reconstruction of the mental out of its 
products, logic, ethics, and aesthetics.^ Thus it can be claimed 
with a certain illusory show of reason, that this neo-Kantian 
positivistic idealism is at the same time the true realism. ^ 
We would maintain, however, that the appearance of realism 
— or the actual realism of an abstract sort — is simply due to 
the abstract character of the idealism. Reality is interpreted 
as a rationally organized totality of experience — the world of 
science viewed as the product of a priori thought — a total 
world of experience, however, which needs not to be con- 
sciously experienced in order to exist. This is not realism, 
however closely it may resemble it in certain of its doctrines ; 
it is abstract idealism. We are asked to believe in a world 
which is, in its entirety and everywhere, product of thought in 
general, and which may nevertheless exist apart from the 
thought or experience of any particular thinker. Natorp in- 
terprets a concrete realistic view such as would regard objects 
as existing independently of 'Hhe subjectivity of knowledge," 
as due to a false but necessary abstraction.^ Without attempt- 
ing here to justify the realistic view, it may be remarked that it 
is surely a less violent abstraction — if abstraction it is — to 
hold that things may exist apart from knowledge than to main- 
tain on the one hand that things cannot exist apart from 
knowledge, and on the other hand that the world of knowl- 
edge may exist apart from any actual knower. Since, apart 
from the Hegelian Absolute Consciousness, the conditions can- 
not be fulfilled for all of the objects in the neo-Kantian " world of 
experience" being actually experienced, we have in this doc- 
trine what amounts to saying that that is to be thought of as 
idea which nevertheless cannot be idea — the characteristic mark 
of abstract idealism. The resemblance to the Platonic abstract 
or logical idealism and realism is at this point so close that it 
is not surprising that Natorp, as we have seen, undertakes to 
interpret Plato as having been, virtually, a neo-Kantian. But 
the difference is mainly this, that while the neo-Kantian is a 

1 Natorp, Einleitung in die Psychologic; Objeckt und Methode der Psychologic ; 
see O. Ewald, Philosophical Review, XXIII, 1914, pp. 629-32. 

2 Cohen, op. cit., p, 511. 

'"Ueber objektive und subjektive Begriindung der Erkenntnis," Philos- 
ophische Monatshcfte, XXIII, 1887, pp. 267, 269. 



198 THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE 

concrete or logical-psychological idealist with reference to what 
is actually experienced, and an abstract or logical idealist (and 
therefore, when this abstract or logical idealism is itself ab- 
stracted from, taken abstractly, an abstract or logical reahst) 
only with reference to what is not directly experienced, Plato 
was a logical idealist (and by a further abstraction, a logical 
reahst) with reference to all reality, including what is within 
the direct or immediate experience of the individual. 

The abstract idealists to be considered next are the critical 
transcendentalists. These are the members of what is some- 
times called the Freiburg school, Wilhelm Windelband, Hein- 
rich Rickert, and Hugo Miinsterberg. As distinguished from the 
Marburg school, with whose neo-Kantianism, so far as concerns 
the world of science and common experience, they are in essen- 
tial agreement, they find reality also, in some sense of the word, 
in an eternal ideal world which transcends the empirical world 
of positive science. Their attitude, moreover, is rather more vol- 
untaristic than that of the Marburg school ; it is not so narrowly 
intellectualistic. They regard knowledge as ultimately the real- 
ization of an ideal rather than a simple intellectual fact. 

Windelband especially does not differ greatly from the Mar- 
burg school. Metaphysics as a science of the ultimate grounds 
of reality he stigmatizes as an ''Unding." ^ Philosophy fulfils 
its legitimate mission when it becomes "a critical science of 
universally valid values." ^ There are certain evaluations 
which have absolute validity, even if they do not receive any 
recognition.^ Philosophy is the science of "consciousness in 
general," a system of norms which are objectively valid, al- 
though only partially realized.^ Thus, while science deals with 
the given, philosophy's peculiar realm is the required (Auf- 
gegebene) ; ^ in other words, it deals with that which is eternally 
valid as an ideal to be progressively realized. Logic, ethics, 
and aesthetics, then, are the only fundamental philosophical 
sciences ; they deal with the nature of the true, the good, and 
the beautiful as eternally valid ideals.^ But not only does 

1 Praludien, 4th ed., 1911, Vol. I, p. 40. 2 75.^ p. 29. ^ /;,., p. 37. 

* lb., p. 46. 8 Einleitung in die Philosophie, 1914, Ch. I. 

« " Principles of Logic," in Windelband and Ruge's Encyclopedia of the Philo- 
sophic Sciences, Vol. I, 1913, p. 9. 



THE DISINTEGRATION OF IDEALISM 199 

philosophy concern itself with the ideal; it is itself as yet an 
ideal, not yet fully made actual anywhere.^ 

Windelband's philosophy involves at least that type of 
abstract ideahsm which we have just found in the more posi- 
tivistic neo-Kantians. On the one hand, the natural world of 
which the geologist and the astronomer speak is interpreted as 
a construct of human thought. ''The world which we experi- 
ence is our deed." ^ This looks like subjectivism ; but on the 
other hand the positivistic abstractionism is seen in the doctrine 
that, although the data of sense-perception are only presenta- 
tions, or ideas — i.e. have no existence but psychical existence,^ 
— and although, as intimated above, the totality of reality is 
so unknowable as to render metaphysics a vain attempt, abso- 
lute reahty is not qualitatively other than the being we know, 
but simply the whole of which our presentations or ideas are 
parts. We postulate an ultimate unifying inner connection 
of all reality.^ Here the implication seems to be that reality 
includes presentations or ideas that are not presented to, or 
thought by, any subjects whatsoever — a clear case of abstract 
idealism. 

But, in addition to this, Windelband at times comes peri- 
lously near to substantiating the ''world of spiritual values," ^ 
although he is on his guard against such metaphysical dogma- 
tism.^ In the religious consciousness the true, the good, and 
the beautiful are said to be experienced as transcendent reality.'' 
In other words, rehgion postulates as real the totality of all 
rational values experienced in an absolute unity, although this 
can be grasped by none of the forms of our consciousness.^ 
It is maintained, we must admit, that all that we can grasp of 
the transcendent is that which ought to be.^ But this is spoken 
of as the "higher reality," the true thing-in-itself, something 
not known, and yet, it is asserted, experienceable as a tran- 
scendent inner reality in our consciousness of the ideal. In the 
consciousness of the eternal a universally valid, super-individual 
somewhat makes its appearance in the deeps of our hfe; the 

1 Praludien, 1, p. 46. 2 lb., Vol. II, p. 260. 

3 Encyclopedia, etc., p. 62. ■* lb., p. 65. ^ Praludien, Vol. II, p. 21. 

* Einleitung in die Philosophie, Ch. I. ^ Praludien, Vol. II, p. 282. 

» 76., p. 266. 9 lb., p. 318. 



200 THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE 

eternal comes into our temporal existence. i' Here the ideal 
seems to be treated as an eternal and transcendent reality, and 
yet as not present explicitly and completely, in any conscious- 
ness. But to assert the extra-psychical reality of an ideal, as 
such, is manifestly to be guilty of abstractionism. It treats 
the same entity as ideal and as real under conditions such that 
not all of the reality can be actually an ideal. Moreover, it 
overlooks the fact that when any ideal is actually set up, it can- 
not, as ideal, be rationally regarded as transcendently, or other- 
wise than psychologically, a reality. 

Rickert carries further this ascription of some sort of tran- 
scendent and independent reality to the ideal. He recognizes 
subjective idealism as relatively vaUd,^ and finds objectivity 
not in being, but in what universally ought to be. The univer- 
sal necessity of scientific consciousness, the Miissen, is not 
enough to raise the structure of the understanding into objec- 
tivity; that can come only from the necessity of a universal 
moral obligation (Sollen).^ The truth of all judgments, even 
judgments of existence, consists in this universal value.^ This 
"ought" is ultimate. We can go no further than to say the 
judgment ought to take place, not because it says what really 
is, but because it ought to take place.^ To deny the ''ought" 
leads to contradiction.^ This ''ought," acknowledged in 
judgments, then, is the only possible object of knowledge.'' 
There is no meaning in assuming a reality "behind" represen- 
tations.^ But this " ought " which is the object of knowledge 
must be independent of the subject in the fullest sense; it is 
valid whether recognized by any one, or not; a transcendent 
"ought" is therefore the object of knowledge.® 

Now it ought to be recognized by Rickert and others that 
while this logical "ought" is independent of the circumstance 
as to whether any particular person who may be selected is 
actually judging or not, it is by no means independent of the 
circumstance that a judgment is called for in a certain situa- 
tion, and is either being made or to be made. The Sollen in- 

1 Praludien, Vol. II, pp. 319-22. 

' Der Gegenstand der Erkenntnis, 1904, p. 56, cf. p. 163. 

' lb., pp. 114-15. 4 J5.^ p, 117. 5 75.^ pp. 18, 19. 

« lb., p. 128. 7 75.^ p. 122. s 75.^ p. 123. » lb., p. 125. 



THE DISINTEGRATION OF IDEALISM 201 

dependent of any mind is an abstraction ; the Sein independent 
of any mind is not necessarily so. The truth is what ought to 
be recognized by any one making a judgment under certain 
circumstances and for certain purposes, whether, as a matter 
of fact, any one does recognize it or not. The ''ought" is 
hypothetical, contingent on the existence of minds and also 
on there being a prior ''ought," the obligation (itself hypo- 
thetical or categorical) to make any judgment at all in the 
given situation. Apart from mind and will there can be no 
"ought," and to assume that there can be is to be guilty of 
abstractionism. 

Mlinsterberg seems to have reacted against the abstractness 
of Rickert's transcendental Sollen. It is preferable to the 
Miissen of science, but the ultimate category for objectivity is 
neither Sein, nor Miissen, nor Sollen, but Wollen.^ In view of 
the eternal validity of ideal values, it is inferred that an over- 
individual Will wills the world as a causally related order, and 
imposes its own ideal standards upon every rational agent and 
experient. In this view of the Ultimate Object as Will and not 
Being — as that which is not, and yet which acts ^ — we have 
another clear instance of abstractionism, against which criti- 
cisms, essentially similar to those urged against Windelband 
and Rickert, are to be regarded as valid. 

In Fritz Mtinch's recent publication, entitled Erlehnis und 
Geltung, still another ultimate category of objectivity is offered, 
viz. Gelten (import). This view, involving the reduction of 
existence to meaning, or logical validity, while parallel with 
the views of Rickert and Mlinsterberg, establishes, by virtue 
of its emphasis upon the logical, close affiliations both with the 
philosophy of the Marburg school and with that of the logi- 
cal transcendentalists to be examined forthwith. The vicious 
abstractionism involved in reducing being to import, the that 
to the what, is so extreme that criticism seems superfluous.^ 

The fourth type of abstract idealism we called logical- 
transcendental. In its more characteristic forms it is in large 

1 The Eternal Values, 1909, p. 55. 2 /^.^ pp, 399^ 400, etc. 

' Erlehnis und Geltung : Eine systematische Untersuchung zur Transzendental- 
philosophie als Weltanschauung, 1913, pp. 26-7, 36, 177 ff., 184-8, etc. ; see 
O. Ewald, Philosophical Review, XXIII, 1914, pp. 622-4. 



202 THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE 

part approximately a return to the logical idealism of Plato, 
and shows a distinct tendency to pass over, like the thought of 
Plato, into logical realism. Logical idealism, by reason of its 
abstractionism, is an unstable doctrine. If the abstraction 
involved were consistently recognized, the logical idealism 
would pass over into psychological idealism, of either the 
Fichtean or the neo-Kantian type. But when, on the con- 
trary, the abstraction is taken abstractly, i.e. when the ab- 
stractness is abstracted from, the basis is laid for the doctrine 
that some (or all) logical ideas are objective realities ; indeed, 
such a disguised logical idealism already practically amounts to 
logical realism. 

A good representative of the movement toward this logical- 
transcendental form of abstract idealism is E. Husserl. He 
would have us understand by ''object" that which the act 
of judging intends, whether it is real or unreal, fictitious or 
utterly absurd.^ It is something which is never contained 
within the act of judging itself, but always transcends it.^ 
Even though the object be a fiction, it is fundamentally dif- 
ferent from my act.^ Objects may be perceived, but they are 
never experienced. The world can never be experience of one 
thinking; it is the intended object.^ In this we have Hus- 
serFs polemic against psychologism and advocacy of logism in 
its stead. To be meant, it is insisted, is not to be psychically 
real.^ 

HusserFs " universal objects " are comparable to Plato's 
"ideas." The whole human race and all thinking beings might 
disappear, it is maintained, and yet the Kingdom of eternal 
ideas would remain eternal and unchangeable.® This sounds 
Platonic, and yet there are differences between Husserl's 
logical transcendentalism and the logical idealism and realism 
of Plato. Husserl's "objects" or "ideas" are more explicitly 
non-psychological than Plato's "ideas," and yet at the same 
time they include both real and unreal objects. It may be 

1 Logische Untersuchungen, 1900, 1901, Vol. II, p. 353. A second edition 
appeared in 1913, but except where otherwise indicated our references are to the 
earlier edition. 

2 76., Ch. V, §§2, 14, 20. ' 76., p. 387. 

* lb., pp. 327, 365. 6 76., passim. See 2d ed., II, p. 133. 

6 Logische Untersuchungen, Vol. II, pp. 101, 132-6, 140, 387. 



THE DISINTEGRATION OF IDEALISM 203 

questioned whether Husserl, in spite of his vigorous repudiation 
of any metaphysical hypostatizing of his "universal objects," ^ 
has really escaped this danger as completely as he imagines. ^ 
Of course he intends to keep clear of all such entanglements. 
He is careful to make it clear that he uses " essence " as a log- 
ical rather than a metaphysical category/^ and overtly regards 
the object (Gegenstand) not as anything metaphysically real, 
but only as a purely logical, intentional unity, a subject of 
possible predicates.^ But his persistent refusal to recognize 
that these '' ideas " or '' objects " have been arrived at by any 
process of abstracting from what has been experienced, and his 
insistence upon his transcendence theory instead, we may regard 
as showing very obviously that he has not only substituted an 
abstract, logical idea for the ostensibly real things which enter 
into our experience, and so has fallen into the error of logical 
idealism; but in refusing again to recognize that he has made 
this abstraction, he has abstracted from the abstraction so far as 
to have placed himself at least on the verge of logical realism as 
well. ^.^ 

Another who may be regarded as a logical transcendentalist is 
A. Meinong, whose " Gegenstandstheorie " has of late years been 
attracting much attention.^ For Meinong philosophy is funda- 
mentally the science of the possible objects of thought. These 
objects (Gegenstdnde) include, besides objects proper (Ohjekte), 
''objectives," i.e. predications, such as ''the shortest distance 
between two points" or "that grass is green." Thus every 
judgment or supposal (Annahme) has an indirect object (what 
is judged about — really what is ordinarily called the subject) and 
an objective (what is judged or supposed) ; and of course the 
objective of one judgment or supposal may become the indirect 

1/6., 2ded., II, p. 101. 

2 Cf. R. Kroner, Zeitschrift fiir Philosophie, Vol. 134, 1909, pp. 249 ff. 

^ Ideen zu einer reinen Phdnomenologie und phanomenologische Philosophie, 
1913, pp. 10, 11, etc. 

^ Cf. H. Lanz, Das Problem der Gegenstdndlichkeit in der modernen Logik, 
1912, p. 86. 

5 Ueber Annahmen, 1902 ; 2d ed., 1910 ; " Ueber Gegenstandstheorie " in Unter- 
suchungen zur Gegenstandstheorie und Psychologie, 1904; Ueber Urteilsgefiihle, 
1905 ; Ueber die Erfahrungsgrundlagen unseres Wissens, 1906 ; Ueber die Stellung 
der Gegenstandstheorie im System der Wissenschaften, 1907 ; Abhandlungen zur 
Erkenntnistheorie und Gegenstandstheorie, 1913. 



204 THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE 

object of another, as in the judgment, ''It is certain that 
grass is green." The existence of any object, i.e. that it exists, 
is always an objective ; and so it may be said that what is de- 
sired or enjoyed is never an object, but always an objective. 
Obviously, objectives do not exist, are not real; but if they are 
true, they are, or ''subsist" (bestehen), as objects of a higher 
order. They transcend not only the realm of experience, but 
the realm of existence itself. Some objects may exist; but 
others, abstractions and propositions, can only subsist, while still 
others, "impossible objects," such as the celebrated "round 
square," neither exist nor subsist. Thus, it is claimed, " Gegen- 
standstheorie " is a much broader philosophical discipline than 
metaphysics and includes the latter ; it proceeds a priori, while 
the proper metaphysical procedure is a posteriori. Its one 
branch which has been at all highly developed hitherto is math- 
ematics; but the need for other branches being developed is 
shown by the fact that there are still many " homeless objects," 
i.e. (1) objects which have no place as objects of investigation in 
any of the recognized sciences, e.g. sensorial contents (colors, 
etc.), which are neither physical nor psychological objects of in- 
vestigation, besides the (2) "impossible objects " and (3) objec- 
tives already mentioned. 

Now it is this making metaphysics a division of " Gegen- 
standstheorie," this considering of existence as simply a species 
of being, this substitution of ideal " superiora " for existent 
things, that is the mark of abstractionism which attracts our 
attention in this particular system, and which may be taken to 
indicate at once an abstract logical realism, and that of which 
it is the simple converse, an abstract logical idealism. We should 
have no hesitation in classing Meinong as a logical realist, were 
it not that he speaks of his abstractions as not existing, not be- 
ing real, but as simply subsisting as " superiora," ideal objects 
of a higher order, their existence as abstractions in the mind 
being dismissed as " pseudo-existence." ^ But when we find ex- 
istence itself taken as an " objective " simply, ^ we see that the 

^ Ueber die Erfahrungsgrundlagen, etc., pp. 55 ff. ; Ueber die Stellung, etc., pp. 
97, 100. 

2 Cf. also the essay by R. Ameseder, a disciple of Meinong, in Untersuchungen, 
etc. 



THE DISINTEGRATION OF IDEALISM 205 

escape from logical realism is merely verbal, while the fact of 
the abstract logical idealism becomes indisputable. 

Now we have no objection to urge against the main content 
of this so-called " Gegenstandstheorie." Let the philosopher 
busy himself with the investigation of " impossible objects," if 
he will, and in straightening out his thinking in connection with 
such paradoxes as that " there are objects of which it is true to 
say that there are no such objects."^ Only, we would insist, 
let it be recognized that " Gegenstandstheorie " deals with ab- 
stractions; and if the concrete existences of metaphysics are 
to be interpreted from the point of view of '' Gegenstandstheorie," 
it is nothing but fair that its abstract entities should be reinter- 
preted in terms of metaphysics, and " subsistence " reduced 
either to existence in certain relations, but independently of 
mind, or to simple non-existence independently of mind, which 
would mean, of course, existence only in dependence upon the 
conscious process in and by which it was thought. Only in this 
way can those paradoxes be solved, into which " Gegenstands- 
theorie " is bound to run, such as that there are objects which 
are not, i.e. which do not even subsist. '^ Gegenstandstheorie," 
attempting to solve this puzzle, can only seek to discover some 
new Seinsohjektiv which would be neither " that it exists " nor 
" that it subsists." But metaphysics makes short work of the 
paradox by simply pointing out that the first ''are" means 
" exist as thought-construct in mind," while the second means 
'' exist independently of the thought which thinks them." 
Thus to subordinate " Gegenstandstheorie " to metaphysics is 
fatal at once to those twin forms of abstractionism, logical 
realism and logical idealism. We would admit, to be sure, that 
the way in which Meinong makes the existent or reality a 
species of being (other forms of which, besides the possibly ex- 
istent, are the merely subsisterit and the absurd or impossible) 
obscures the logical realism, since it makes it possible to avoid 
saying that these impossible and merely subsisteht objects, and 
especially these objectives, are real (in the sense of exist) ; the 
logical realism, although prominent, is disguised. The logical 
idealism, on the contrary, while less conspicuous, is more un- 
disguised. Logic and metaphysics are not identified, as with 

1 Untersuchungen, etc., p. 9. 



206 THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE 

Hegel ; rather is it that the former usurps the throne rightfully 
belonging to the latter. Reality is not the concrete universal, 
as with Hegel ; rather is it for Meinong, ever since he emerged 
from his early " psychologism/' ^ essentially constituted, as are 
all other ''objects," of abstract universals,^ 

Before passing to a brief consideration of the third general 
type of idealistic thought resulting from the disintegration of 
idealism in its more highly composite forms, it may be well to 
refer to the philosophy of C. M. Bakewell, which partakes of 
the nature of both of the types already examined in this chap- 
ter. Influenced on the one hand by Howison's pluralism, and 
on the other hand by Platonic and neo-Kantian idealism, 
Bakewell seems classifiable either as a personal idealist or as a 
representative of what we have called abstract idealism. The 
interesting question is whether or not the two views are really 
compatible with each other. If not incompatible, their union 
might possibly arrest, for some time at least, the disintegration 
of idealism. 

In undertaking to defend idealism against realistic attacks 
Bakewell repudiates psychological idealism, with its ''unfor- 
tunate phrase," esse est percipi, as not being the true idealism. 
"Ideas," he insists, "are not mental phenomena." It is true 
enough that the object taken as the "thing-as-immediately- 
apprehended" is " tantalizingly subjective," but objectivity is 
a "character which the impression acquires in being thought.'^ ^ 
Here we see the characteristically modern introduction of logi- 
cal idealism into psychological idealism in order to transform 
subjective idealism into an idealism that shall do full justice 
to objectivity. "The solid rock of fact dissolves into the 
shifting sands of sense," only, it is held, "in so far as [logical] 
ideas are extruded." The real is, as the Greeks contended, 
the " idea " ; it is meaning fulfilled.^ By means of the " idea," 
then, experience is made universal, public, objective. Reality 

* With Husserl's polemic against the " Psychologisten," Meinong is in full 
sympathy. See Abhandlungen, pp. 501 ff. 

' M. R. Cohen may be mentioned here as having fallen, apparently, into an 
abstract logical idealism, with its accompanying logical realism. Seep. 304, infra. 

» "Idealism and Realism," Philosophical Review, Vol. XVIII, 1909, pp. 505, 
509, 511. 

< lb., pp. 511-12. 



THE DISINTEGRATION OF IDEALISM 207 

is universal experience; but universal experience is not my 
experience, nor the sum of all our experiences. It includes all 
possible experiences, and all experiences that once were, but 
no longer are, possible experiences. What idealism contends 
is that this total experiential context is real. And yet this 
experience is not, and never could be, for any subject, an 
experienced fact. The concept of experience is transcendent 
of experience. It includes, for example, all that happened on 
this planet before there were any minds to experience it.^ 

Here then we seem to have an oscillation between an idealism 
which is concrete but subjective and an idealism which is 
objective but abstract, between my experience which is not the 
objective reality and an objective or universal ''experience," 
most of which is not experienced. As Bakewell himself 
observes, ''all of a sudden this experience which seemed so 
objective flashes forth ... as something highly subjective. 
It is just as when gazing steadily at an intaglio it may suddenly 
jump forth into relief." "Experience" sometimes means 
"private, individual, subjective, all my own; and anon, the 
objective common world of facts." ^ ''When one finds one's self 
in this condition, one must run for the other fellow and borrow 
his vision to assure one's self that one has not been dreaming. 
Or else one must collect one's self," and get " the immediate 
experience in its larger experiential context." ^ 

The orthodox modern idealistic way out of this oscillation 
between subjectivity and abstract objectivity, by introducing 
an all-experiencing Absolute, Bakewell refuses to take. He 
speaks of the "impartial spectator" to whom we refer objec- 
tive experience. Reality is experience as it would be to an 
impartial observer ; but this impartial observer is a fiction, he 
is my own other .^ The only real transcendent being is the free 
inner fife of my fellow-men ; reahty is the idea, carried up into 
the ideal, the joint creation of many minds. ^ 

This type of idealism seems at first to occupy a highly de- 

1 "On the Meaning of Truth," Philosophical Review, XVII, 1908, pp. 585-6. 
* "The Problem of Transcendence," Philosophical Review, XX, 1911, p. 125. 

3J6. 

*Ib., p. 126. 

5*" The Ugly Infinite and Good-for-Nothing Absolute," Philosophical Review, 
XVI, 1907, p. 143. 



208 THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE 

fensible position. When attack is made against the subjec- 
tivity of personal ideaUsm, recourse is had to the objectivity 
and universahty of the structures of rational thought. When 
the structures of universal thought are attacked as abstrac- 
tions, then return is possible to the concreteness of personal 
experience. But neither of the two positions occupied thus 
alternately by means of a sort of underground passage is by 
itself impregnable. If one refuses to accept a realistic view, 
but makes ''experience" in some non-absolutistic sense his 
ultimate metaphysical category, he must choose between "my 
experience" (subjectivism) and unexperienced "experience" 
(abstractionism), or else keep perpetualty hovering between 
the two positions. We have no thought of questioning the 
good faith of the philosopher whose views we are considering ; 
but it may be remarked that all determined idealists would do 
wisely to note the tactical advantages of some such alternating 
occupation of different positions during this time of general 
retreat of the forces of idealism. In any case, what makes 
the view criticised especially significant at this point in our dis- 
cussion is the fact that it consists in holding together in some- 
what loose juxtaposition two of the elements into which modern 
idealism has disintegrated, viz. subjective, psychological ideal- 
ism on the one hand and abstract, logical idealism on the other. 
The third element, the mystical or religious idealism, is allowed 
to lapse, apparently as being of no philosophical value. 

There is one remaining type of idealism which may be re- 
garded as an outcome of the disintegration of absolute idealism 
into its original elements. It is the spiritual or religious ideal- 
ism to which many cling for its supposed religious and moral 
value. It is an approach to the original mystical ideahsm, 
although not a return to it. It may be regarded as a relic of 
the original mystical basis of idealism. Of this type of thought 
Rudolf Eucken and his English disciple, W. R. Boyce Gibson, 
may be taken as furnishing an illustration. 

Eucken carefully distinguishes his "new idealism" from 
"immanental idealism," that intellectualistic ideaUsm which 
would obliterate spiritual distinctions and reduce all to degrees 
of rationahty. But even this rejected form of idealism is appre- 
ciated for its emphasis upon inwardness, in opposition to 



THE DISINTEGRATION OF IDEALISM 209 

naturalism. 1 Eucken does not stop to make explicit correction 
of the logical errors of the subjectivism with which this ''in- 
wardness" is associated. There is simply a consciousness of 
the disparity between ordinary idealism and the philosophy of 
the spiritual life, and so the term ''idealism" is discounted as 
an "outworn expression." What we would inquire, however, 
is whether what Eucken is really interested in is not spiritual 
realism; and if so, whether such a philosophy is really so in- 
compatible with phj^sical realism as Eucken seems to suppose. 

Boyce Gibson, under the influence of English absolute and 
personal idealism, as well as under the spell of Eucken's spiritual 
philosophy, commits himself more fully to idealism than does 
his master. He calls his own position "radically idealistic." ^ 
Moreover, he does not hesitate to describe his own view, which 
he takes to be that of Eucken also, as "religious idealism." 
Indeed, there is a distinct suggestion of mysticism as the source 
of the philosophy in question. "Fruition, the intimate realiza- 
tion of God's presence . . . authorizes the conviction," he 
claims, "that God is with us," and forms, in his opinion, the 
very essence of Eucken's philosophy of life.^ The whole re- 
ligious life is interpreted as a participation in the life of God ; ^ 
and inasmuch as all spiritual life is interpreted as "a religious 
endeavor — a striving with God for the realization of a God- 
Heaven or Spiritual World," ^ we can see how there is sug- 
gested the importance of retaining, at least in its "spiritual" 
essentials, that philosophy which has been most insistent upon 
the "union of the human and the divine." ® There is prac- 
tically nothing left, strictly speaking, of either psychological 
or logical idealism; only the mystical element remains, and 
but a residue of that. The result is a philosophical view which, 
at least until the knowledge-value of religious experience has 
been philosophicallj^ vindicated, must appear to the philosopher, 
whether he be realist or idealist, as utterly dogmatic. 

In view, then, of the considerations which have been urged 

* Christianity and the New Idealism, Eng. Tr., 1909 ; The Meaning and Value 
of Life, Eng. Tr., 1910, pp. 11-18, 130-38 ; Life's Basis and Life's Ideal, Eng. Tr., 
1911, pp. 15-22, 99 £f. ; Main Currents of Modern Thought, Eng. Tr., 1912, pp. 
99-115. 

2 God With Us, 1909, p. 161. 3 75.^ pp. xiv, xvi. 

4 lb., p. 83. 6 /b.^ p. 168. 6 lb. 

P 



210 THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE 

against idealistic epistemology in its various forms, we would 
claim that the burden of proof, which has been so cheerfully 
taken up by the idealists themselves, still rests upon their 
shoulders as an undischarged obligation. In each of its ele- 
mental types and in all of their possible combinations, it has 
been found artificial, fallacious, and dogmatic. It is not to be 
accepted, even as a way of escape from agnosticism, if any 
more natural and rational course can be discovered. 



3. A CRITIQUE OF THE NEW REALISM 

CHAPTER X 

Antecedents of the New Realism 

We have now examined critically both realistic epistemo- 
logical dualism and idealistic epistemological monism, with 
the result that both are shown to be unsatisfactory as theories 
of knowledge. We must next turn to realistic epistemological 
monism, our definition of which may be taken from the report 
of the Committee on Definitions of the 1911 meeting of the 
American Philosophical Association . ' ' Epistemological monism 
and realism" is there defined as the view 'Hhat perceived 
objects are sometimes real and sometimes not real; and real 
objects are sometimes perceived and sometimes not perceived" ; 
or, perhaps more characteristically, "that the real object and 
the perceived object are at the moment of perception numeri- 
cally one, and that the real object may exist at other moments 
apart from any perception." ^ 

But before proceeding further it may be well to indicate 
that within epistemological monism and realism it is important 
to make a further subdivision, distinguishing between what 
we may call dogmatic ^ realism, or realistic absolute monism in 
epistemology, in which it is held that ''secondary" or sense- 
qualities are independent of relation to a sensing subject, and 
on the other hand, critical realism, or critical realistic monism 
in epistemology, in which it is held that secondary qualities 
are dependent upon that relation for their existence. That 
critical realism is compatible with epistemological monism will 
be maintained in the constructive part of our discussion of 
''the problem of acquaintance"; for the present we shall be 

^Journal of Philosophy, etc., Vol. VIII, 1911, p. 703. 

* The justification of this epithet, which at least one of the neo-realists has 
explicitly invited, will appear as we proceed. See, especially, p. 309, infra. 

211 



212 THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE 

concerned with realistic absolute epistemological monism, or 
epistemological monism and dogmatic realism, of which point 
of view the best illustration is to be found in the ''new realism" 
of contemporary EngUsh and American philosophical thought. 
It manifestly intends to defend not only the numerical identity 
of the real object and the object perceived, but also, as far as 
possible, their qualitative identity. Its ideal, as intimated, is 
an absolute epistemological monism of the realistic type. In 
the present chapter we shall deal only with the antecedents 
of this new realism, including under this caption, first, naive 
realism and the ''natural realism" or "philosophy of common 
sense" of the Scottish school, and thereafter, the disguised 
forms of psychological and logical idealism, which may be 
regarded as transitional forms between psychological and logical 
idealism proper and corresponding phases of the new realism. 

Concerning naive realism not much needs to be said in this 
connection. Meaning by this term the view of independent 
reality taken by the non-philosophical "plain man," it should 
be pointed out that it is not a definitely formulated doctrine, 
but rather a practical attitude. It involves, in the first place, 
viewing the object as if it permanently possessed, whether per- 
ceived or not, the qualities, secondary as well as primary, 
which it has under normal or usual conditions of observation. 
Under unusual conditions of observation, however, some of 
these supposedly permanent qualities may not appear, and 
others incompatible with them may even appear in their place, 
as in the case of the apparent bend in the straight stick partly 
immersed in water, or in that of the darker shade of objects 
seen in dim light. These unusual appearances are not regarded 
as permanent qualities of the independent object, but as mere 
appearances, from which one can judge what the true quality 
really is. But if the question be raised as to the justification 
for supposing, on the one hand, that the more usual appearance 
is identical with what the object really is (whether perceived 
or not, and even with what it is when perceived and appearing 
differently), and for supposing, on the other hand, that unusual 
appearances which are incompatible with the usual ones are 
not real qualities of the object at all, then, in the very raising 
of the question the realism, if it is retained at all, ceases at 



ANTECEDENTS OF THE NEW REALISM 213 

once to be naive, and begins to be philosophical. It should 
be said further, however, that the naive realist does not always 
notice that qualities which he regards as independently real 
are mutually incompatible, for the reason, it may be, that 
both appearances are almost equally common, as, for example, 
the rising inflection of the whistle of the locomotive when it is 
approaching, and the falling inflection when it is receding. 
This means that at different times our naive realist would 
assert the independent reality (involving, logically, the exis- 
tential concurrence) of qualities which a moment's reflection 
would show to be incompatible with each other. The explana- 
tion of this is that ''naive realism does not bother itself to carry 
any idea about with it that is not essential for practice." ^ 

In the Scottish ''philosophy of common sense," or "natural 
realism," we have the attempt to defend philosophically, as 
far as possible, naive points of view. The real founder and 
most typical representative of the school was Thomas Reid. 
First led to suspect the subject! vistic and dualistic "principles 
commonly received among philosophers" (especially Locke 
and his followers) by the conclusions drawn therefrom by 
Hume in his Treatise of Human Nature,^ he attempted to return 
to the naive convictions of the plain man, especially as they 
are embodied in common language, and to exhibit these in 
organized form and defend them as philosophically respectable. 
His main object of attack is what he calls the "doctrine of 
ideas," viz. the dualistic or representative theory of knowledge, 
the theory that in all cognition, even in perception, what we 
know directly is never the independent object itself, but always 
only a mental content, produced by the knower to represent 
that independent object, and coming between the mind and 
the material object supposed to be perceived. No solid proof, 
he claims, has ever been advanced of the existence of ideas; 
they are a mere fiction and hypothesis contrived to solve the 
phenomena of the human understanding ; and yet thej^ do not 
at all answer this end, but give rise to paradoxes and scepticism.^ 

1 D, S. Miller, "Naive Realism; What is It?" in Essays . . . in Honor of 
William James, 1908, p. 258. 

2 Reid's Collected Writings, edited by Hamilton, p. 91. 

' An Inquiry into the Human Mind, Collected Writings, 106a ; cf . 127a, 141b- 
142b ; On the Intellectual Powers, ib., 302b. 



214 THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE 

Now in his opposition to the doctrine of a purely represen- 
tative perception and in maintaining the possibihty and actuahty 
of immediate perception, Reid was, we would claim, on the right 
track. But his good intentions were not very successfully 
carried out. In the first place he undoubtedly carried his re- 
action against ''ideas " much too far. He claims that in memory 
and in thought of the future or of a distant object, the original 
experience, the possible future event, and the absent object 
are all known, not mediately, through images or ideas, but 
immediatel3^^ A moment's consideration of the fact of erro- 
neous thought ought to have taught him that these processes 
are mediate, or representational; the object thought of not 
being independently real, it must be something which depends 
upon the thought-process for such reality as it has ; in other 
words, it must be mere ''idea." But a thought which was 
erroneous, may, when repeated at a later time, be now true, 
by virtue of a change in independent reality without any essen- 
tial change within the thought itself. In such a case, if the 
earlier immediate object of thought was an idea, the later 
immediate object of thought must be an "idea" also — al- 
though, of course, it need not be thought of as an idea ; it is 
only its mediate object which is a thing. (To be more explicit, 
we know the thing, but mediately, by means of an idea, which 
we know immediately, although we do not necessarily make it 
a subject-matter concerning which we judge.) Reid's doctrine 
of an unmediated awareness in all cognition is thus an easily 
refuted dogma. 

Reid goes far toward the view (to be defended later in this 
book) that consciousness is psychical activity. For instance, 
he says that in sensation the distinction between the act and the 
object is merely grammatical, while in perception the distinc- 
tion is not grammatical only, but also real.^ That he fails, 
however, to see that it is a creative activity, and so is unable to 
arrive at any clear view on this point, is evident from the way 
in which he deals with objects of imagination. These, he claims, 
must be objects distinct from the operation of the mind concern- 

1 Inquiry, Collected Writings, 106a, b ; Intellectual Powers, ib., 427b, 339a, 
351b, 357a, 340b, 374b. 

* Inquiry, Collected Writings, 183a. 



ANTECEDENTS OF THE NEW REALISM 215 

ing them; the imagination (imagining) of a centaur is one 
thing, and the centaur imagined, with its various quahties, is 
another.^ Here he seems on the way to teach some sort of 
independent reahty in imaginary objects, doubtless for the 
reason, as it must have seemed to him, that if conscious activity 
were regarded as creative of its object in imagination, it ought 
logically to be similarly regarded in perception, and this would 
have been fatal to natural realism. His glimpse of the impor- 
tant doctrine of consciousness as psychical activity consequently 
remained largely unfruitful. 

But Reid is also to be criticised in connection with his doctrine 
of perception. His treatment of the different senses is incon- 
sistent. In color-vision the color-quality is said to be inde- 
pendently real, while in the perception of smell the external 
reality is merely the effluvia, the quality being a quality of the 
sensation, i.e. of a mental act. Similarly, when a pain is felt 
in any part of the body, the pain is not an extra-mental reality, 
but a sensation or feeling.^ We have no quarrel with the inter- 
pretation of sensation as a psychical activity, but if it is to be 
regarded as productive of the sense-quality in the case of smell 
and pain, there seems no logical reason for denying that it does 
the same in the case of color-vision. Hence Reid's doctrine of 
the external and independent reality of color-qualities seems 
purely dogmatic. Dogmatic, we would say, because, while the 
physical scientist has to posit the primary qualities of bodies — 
or other qualities corresponding to them, point by point — in 
order to be able to formulate the laws of his science, he finds no 
reason to assume the independent existence of color-qualities at 
all. But Reid goes further, and speaks of the changing color-ap- 
pearances of an object as "ideas," produced by the unchanging 
objective color. ^ Now there is no universal principle by the ap- 
plication of which he can make this discrimination ; the shade 
which is taken as objectively real depends upon the purely acci- 
dental fact of the intensity of the light in which the object is cus- 
tomarily viewed, and the whole distinction is therefore dogmatic. 

^Intellectual Powers, ib., 292b, 385a, 298b, 373a, 374b; see Hamilton's 
comments, ib., 813. 
, 2 Inquiry, ib., 137a, b, 114a, 183a ; Intellectual Powers, ib., 318-20. 
« Inquiry, ib., 137b-138b. 



216 THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE 

But once more, as Hamilton has very fully pointed out,^ 
Reid is constantly oscillating between the doctrines of immedi- 
ate and mediate perception. In spite of his intended immediat- 
ism he speaks of our sensations as the signs of external objects, 
the mind passing immediately — either by original principles 
of our constitution, or by custom, or by reasoning — from the 
sensation or appearance of the sign to the conception and beUef 
of the thing signified.^ Even extension and other primary 
qualities are said to be qualities suggested to us by the sensation 
of touch.^ The explanation of this oscillation, which is so 
baffling to the interpreter, seems to lie in the fact that Reid 
was remarkably consistent in the attempt to follow the usages 
of common language as a guiding star to the desired haven of a 
philosophy of common sense. But inasmuch as common lan- 
guage uses many prepsychological notions and occupies various 
mutually inconsistent points of view, the guiding star proves 
to be in the end a will-o'-the-wisp, leading our philosopher 
whither no discreet thinker will care to follow him. 

But, besides developing this presentationism which we have 
just examined, Reid formulated an intellectual intuitionism, 
which has been carried to great lengths bj^ the later adherents 
of the Scottish school, notably by James McCosh ^ and Noah 
Porter.'' He not only speaks of judgments expressing the 
existence of what is perceived as being ''original and natural 
judgments" which are "a part of that furniture which Nature 
hath given to the human understanding," and also as being ''the 
inspiration of the Almighty";* he speaks in the same way of 
those "axioms," "first principles," "principles of common 
sense," "common notions," or "self-evident truths," for which 
he claims the universal consent of mankind.^ Of these he gives 
a formidable but confessedly incomplete list, beginning with the 

1 Reid's Collected Writings, 819-24. Cf . E. H. Sneath, The Philosophy of Reid, 
1892, pp. 36-43. 

2 Inquiry, ib., 188a ; cf. 122a. 

3 76., 123b. Cf. Intellectvxil Powers, ib., pp. 313 ff. It is in passages such as 
this that Reid's substantialism comes to expression. Most neo-realists are too 
positivistic to be able to agree with the earlier thinker at this point, and seem 
consequently to have achieved a more monistic epistemology. 

* The Intuitions of the Mind, 3d ed., 1872. 

* The Human Intellect, 1868, Part IV. 

« Inquiry, ib., 209. ^ Intellectual Powzrs, ib., 425, 434, 456. 



ANTECEDENTS OF THE NEW REALISM 217 

affirmation of "the existence of everything of which I am con- 
scious," and ending with the proposition ''that design and 
inteUigence in the cause may be inferred, with certainty, from 
marks or signs of it in the effect." ^ Now it is Reid's doctrine 
that these self-evident truths are derived, not from experience 
but from ''common sense," or "judgment," and that they 
have an authority which is also independent of experience. ^ 
But this position, in the light of genetic and instrumental logic, 
is easily seen to be unscientific and dogmatic. In fact, it has 
long since been discredited, and needs not to be elaborately^ criti- 
cised here. 

The new form of epistemological monism and realism which 
has sprung up within recent years — the so-called new realism 
— includes among its adherents a considerable number of 
English and American philosophers. Among the English new 
realists may be mentioned L. T. Hobhouse (who may be re- 
garded as in some respects a forerunner, but in other respects 
a representative of the movement), Bertrand Russell, G. E. 
Moore, S. Alexander, T. P. Nunn, A. Wolf, and, as a recent 
convert, G. F. Stout. Among the Americans some of those 
most prominently associated with the new philosophy are F. J. 
E. Woodbridge, G. S. Fullerton, E. B. McGilvary, and six 
others who have collaborated in the interest of the movement, 
viz. R. B. Perry, W. P. Montague, E. B. Holt, W. T. Marvin, 
W. B. Pitkin, and E. G. Spaulding. Others occupy transitional 
positions between older views and the new realism, and a large 
number of psychologists have adopted a view of consciousness 
which brings them naturally into consideration in connection 
with this philosophical group. 

The factors which have entered into the genesis of this neo- 
realism are very many. First of all may be mentioned the 
influence of the positive sciences. Their definite and univer- 
sally acceptable results have contrasted strongly with the 
chaos of conflicting individual opinions on most philosophical 
problems. It was suggested that the realistic attitude adopted, 
"naively" or tentatively, by these sciences was perhaps truer 
than that of the critical or idealistic philosophy which under- 
took to furnish a more adequate "ultimate" point of view. 

1/6., 441-61. ? 76., 416, 425. 



218 THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE 

In the later stages of the movement, of the sciences, psychology 
at the one extreme and pure mathematics at the other have 
been strongly influential. Certain metaphysical problems 
have persisted in making themselves felt in connection with 
psychological theory. These have grown largely out of the 
fact that there seemed to be an overlapping of the fields of 
psychology and the physical sciences. When the psychologist 
undertook to investigate the ''content of consciousness^' he 
was dealing in large part with the same material with which 
the physicist was concerned. The problem as to the field 
of psychology, and so, ultimately, as to the nature of con- 
sciousness, demanded attention. In connection with the 
influence of mathematics, Bertrand Russell's name is the 
one of chief importance. As we shall see, certain of the most 
characteristic doctrines of the more extreme neo-realists 
(among whom most of the six ''progranmaists" already alluded 
to would have to be included) are due to the carrying over of 
the methods of pure mathematics into the field of logic, and so 
into the borderland of philosophy. 

But more internal influences have been at work in recent 
philosophical thought, which must be considered if the genesis 
of the new realism is to be explained. Of these, the evident 
disintegration of absolute idealism has been one of the most 
potent. After Bradley's destructive work from within the 
main presuppositions of the system itself, everything seemed 
to invite to a renewal of the attempt to develop a realistic 
philosophy, such as was undertaken in sober and fairly critical 
fashion by L. T. Hobhouse. But apparently the more general 
course of philosophical thought was from absolute idealism to 
realism by way of personal idealism and pragmatism. The 
criticisms made by these philosophies against the orthodox 
British and American neo-Hegelianism were accepted as largely 
valid ; but the tendency of personal ideahsm and pragmatism, 
especially of the type represented by F. C. S. Schiller, to return 
to subjective idealism, was felt to be a retrograde movement in 
philosophy. G. F. Stout, for example, at first deeply influenced 
by the pluralistic idealism of James Ward, and himself one of the 
personal idealists, finally identified himself with the realistic 
movement. Locally influential also was the panpsychism of 



ANTECEDENTS OF THE NEW REALISM 219 

C. A. Strong's Why the Mind Has a Body, in opposition to 
which F. J. E. Woodbridge and other Columbia University 
philosophers developed further their realistic tendencies. 

But probably the best way of understanding the genesis of 
the new realism is to view it as the joint product of a further 
disguise of disguised psychological idealism on the one hand 
and disguised logical idealism on the other.^ The original 
relation to psychology is thus represented on the one side, and 
the relation to mathematics on the other. Of these two tran- 
sitional philosophies as antecedents of the new realism we shall 
deal first with disguised psychological idealism. What we 
would contend is that the new realism is separated from its 
pet aversion, subjective idealism, by the '^ half-way house" of 
radical or immediate empiricism. This "experience philos- 
ophy" of which Mach, Avenarius, Wundt, Hodgson, James, 
and Dewey may be taken as representative, is essentialh^ transi- 
tional between the older and undisguised psychological idealism 
on the one hand, and that type of realistic epistemological mon- 
ism which calls itself the new realism on the other. This 
becomes evident when it is remembered that the essence of 
that older or overt psychological idealism is the doctrine that 
the object is entirely dependent for its existence upon the psy- 
chical subject, and that the ideal of the new realism is to be 
able to maintain that the objects of which we have experience 
are entirely independent of their being experienced by any 
subject. The natural transition between these opposite posi- 
tions is the view called variously empiriocriticism, and pure, 
or radical, or immediate empiricism, and which we have called 
disguised psychological idealism, according to which the object 
is dependent upon experience, but not upon the subject, inas- 
much as the subject, equally with the object, is dependent upon 
and derived from a pre-subjective experience. In the first 
instance, as we have already seen,^ immediate empiricism arose 
as a pecuharly thoroughgoing application of the principle of 
psychological idealism — its application, that is, to the subject 
as well as to the object. If being depends upon being consciously 

^ For explanation, see, in connection with the remainder of this chapter, 
pp. 109-10, and 84-5 above. 
2 Ch. VI, supra. 



220 THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE 

experienced (as object), the being of the subject, as well as the 
being of the object, depends upon its being consciously experi- 
enced (as object). In pure empiricism the problem of tracing 
the genesis of self-consciousness becomes, as is seen conspicuously 
in the writings of Avenarius, Wundt, and G. H. Mead, the 
problem of the genesis of the self. But it is only a short step 
from this to saying that since subject and object alike are 
dependent for their being upon their being experienced, the 
object is not dependent upon its being experienced hy a previ- 
ously existing subject, especially as self-consciousness seems 
to be later in being developed than consciousness of things. 
Thus by easy steps we have the transition from the doctrine 
that consciousness creates its entire content to the equally 
extreme view that consciousness creates no part whatever of its 
content. To resume, when the principle of psychological ideal- 
ism (the doctrine that being depends upon being consciously 
experienced) is applied to objects, not including the subject, 
the result is undisguised psychological idealism. When this 
principle of psychological idealism is apphed to the subject 
(as object) as well as to other objects, we have the philosophy of 
pure experience, or disguised psychological idealism. But 
when the same principle is applied to the subject alone, the 
result is the new realism in its most essential features. The 
new realism may thus be regarded as the supposed cure of the 
intellectual disease of psychological idealism hy its homeopathic 
treatment. The question which must be raised is whether the 
cure is genuine, or whether it has been simply an obscuring of 
the original symptoms. 

But this doctrine of the genesis of the new reaHsm is so im- 
portant for the understanding of contemporary epistemological 
parties that it will be well to dwell upon it at some length. 
The influence of such continental writers as Mach, Avenarius, 
and Wundt is traceable in the views of several of the English 
and American new realists ; ^ but the prophets of pure empiri- 

1 On the disguised psychological idealism of these thinkers, see Ch. VI, 
above. On the influence of Mach, see R. B. Perry, Present Philosophical Ten-' 
dencies, p. 310. On Avenarius, see W. T. Bush, Avenarius and the Standpoint 
of Pure Experience, 1905, and N. K. Smith, "Avenarius and the Philosophy of 
Pure Experience," Mind, N.S., Vol. XV, 1906, pp. 13-31, 149-60. N. K. Smith, 
influenced by Bergson as well as by Avenarius, seems to be somewhere on the 



ANTECEDENTS OF THE NEW REALISM 221 

cism who have had the greatest honor among the new reahsts 
seem to have been those of their own country. Many American 
reahsts acknowledge the decisive influence of Wilham James 
or of John Dewey, and what James and Dewey have been to 
American thought, Shadworth Hodgson, president of the Aristo- 
teUan Society for many years from the time of its organization, 
seems to have been to several of the members of that organiza- 
tion, out of whose discussions English new realism may be said 
to have arisen. 

Hodgson set out to develop a non-idealistic epistemological 
monism. In order to get rid of 'Hhe great German fog-genera- 
tor, the Ding an sich," ^ he started, like Hume, from ''an analy- 
sis of consciousness without assumptions," "si subjective analy- 
sis of what is actually experienced." ^ Thereupon he seeks to 
do full justice to the objectivity of the naive point of view, not 
by adding logical to psychological idealism, as was done by the 
Hegelians, with ''such vapory catchwords as The Real is the 
Rational, and the Rational is the ReaV^ ;^ but by finding what 
objectivity and independent reality are in immediate experi- 
ence, or "face-to-face perception." ^ As a result of this he 
goes a long way in the direction of a realistic epistemological 
monism, often using language which almost seems to require 
interpretation from that point of view. "All consciousness," 
he says, "reveals Being," ^ and Matter, which, in the context 
of consciousness, has reality only as a percept, has reality also 
in the world of real existence.® What this object of conscious- 
ness is "known as, or what it is in consciousness" ^ is " a reality 
independent of the existence of a perceiving consciousness, and 
irrespective of the fact of its being perceived by consciousness 

way from a philosophy of pure experience to a monistic realism. See article 
entitled, "Subjectivism and Realism in Modern Philosophy," Philosophical Re- 
view, XVII, 1908, pp. 138-48. On Wundt, see G. S. Fullerton, in Philosophical 
Review, XVIII, 1909, pp. 319-31, and C. H. Judd's "Radical Empiricism and 
Wundt's Philosophy," Journal of Philosophy, etc., Vol. II, 1905, pp. 169-76. 

^ Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, 1st series. Vol. II, No. 1, Part I, 
1891-2, p. 7. 

2 The Metaphysic of Experience,'lS98, Vol. I, pp. 18-19; Proc. Aristot. Soc, 
1903-4, pp. 3, 53, 56. 

3 lb., 1891-2, p. 4. * The Metaphysic of Experience, Vol. I, p. 29. 
* Proc. Aristot. Soc, 1891-2, p. 52 ; Metaphysic of Experience, I, p. 6. 
•Proc. Aristot. Soc, 1891-2, p. 7. "^ Mind, N.S., Vol. VI, 1897, p. 235. 



222 THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE 

or not." ^ The key, such as it is, to this is found in the state- 
ment that the subject of consciousness is itself real only in 
self-consciousness ; it is an objectification of abstract conscious- 
ness or thought.^ The doctrine is interpreted in realistic fashion 
by G. E. Moore, as meaning 'Hhat consciousness is in no sense 
a constituent of reality," i.e. in other words, that consciousness 
is a purely external relation ; ^ and distinct traces of Hodgson's 
influence are discoverable in the realistic doctrines of Moore 
himself, as also of Alexander, Russell, Stout, and others. Hodg- 
son's seeming realism, however, is not beyond the limits of pure 
empiricism, or a veiled psychologism. The idea of existence 
apart from knowledge is dismissed as a '^ mirage, " a "common 
sense prejudice." ^ What is meant by independent reality, 
or the only independent reality which we can know, is the con- 
tent of the just previous presentation as it is receding into the 
past and is represented by the present perception. To be per- 
ceived as past perception is to be perceived as object.^ By 
using as his device this definition, which is intended to state what 
independent reality is known as, it is claimed that there is no 
departure from the principle that '^all Being is revealed in 
consciousness," ^ nor even from the view that "there is nothing 
but consciousness in the universe";^ the world has been con- 
structed "out of our inner consciousness."^ Hodgson's posi- 
tion is thus really psychological idealism; but it was early 
disguised as a metaphysic of pure experience, and when the 
fact of this disguise is itself forgotten or disguised, some of its 
most characteristic expressions may easily pass, as we have seen, 
for the doctrine now known as realistic epistemological monism. 
William James was greatly influenced by Hodgson's immedi- 
ate empiricism. He frequently refers with warm approval to 
the doctrine that realities are only what they are "known as." ^ 

1 Proc. Aristot. Soc, 1891-2, p. 12. 

2 Metaphysic of Experience, I, pp. 4, etc. ; see H. W. Carr, "Shadworth Hollo- 
Way Hodgson," in Mind, N.S., XXI, 1912, p. 480. 

3 lb., N.S., VI, 1897, p. 236. * Metaphysic of Experience, Vol. I, p. 17. 

5 The Philosophy of Reflection, 1878, Vol. I, p. 248 ; The Metaphysic of Experi- 
ence, Vol. I, p. 34 ; Proc. Aristot. Soc, 1903-4, p. 60 ; cf. H. W. Carr, loc. cit., 
p. 478. 

6 Proc. Aristot. Soc, 1891-2, p. 52. ^ 75.^ p. 57. 8 jb., p. 58. 

» Pragmatism, p. 50 ; The Meaning of Truth, p. 43 ; Essays in Radical Em- 
piricism, p. 27. 



ANTECEDENTS OF THE NEW REALISM 223 

He accepts the view that it is only when the percept is viewed 
retrospectively that it is either subjective or objective, or both 
at once, though in different relations.^ James, also, like 
Hodgson, is able to use much of the language of realistic epis- 
temological monism. "Radical empiricism," he declares, ''has 
more affinities with natural realism than with the views of 
Berkeley or of Mill." ''Our minds meet in a world of objects 
which they share in common, which would still be there, if one 
or several of the minds were destroyed."^ "Every kind of 
thing experienced must somewhere be real." ^ A solution of the 
puzzle as to how one identical room can be both in outer space 
and in a person's mind is offered in the explanation that the 
same object is counted twice over, once in the biography of the 
person, and again in the history of the house of which the room 
is a part.* Moreover, consciousness is regarded as a mere 
abstract term which connotes a kind of external relation. ^ 
It is no wonder that James is acknowledged by some of the 
younger neo-realists (Montague, Perry, Holt) as having led 
them at least to the borders of the land of which they now claim 
to have achieved possession. And yet that James himself did 
not enter into the promised land of neo-realism is sufficiently 
evident from a number of expressions, which show at the same 
time that, like Moses again, his final resting-place, whether 
agnostic dualism or a covertly idealistic epistemological monism, 
is left somewhat uncertain. Trans-perceptual reality need not 
be denied, he claims; ^ "things of an unexperienceable nature 
may exist ad libitum'^ ; ^ but "the whole agnostic controversy" 
may be gotten rid of "by refusing to entertain the hypothesis 
of trans-empirical reaUty at all." ^ This contains a suggestion 
of agnostic duaHsm escaped only by the will-not-to-beheve in 
the form of the will-not-to-think. But James's more charac- 
teristic doctrine comes to the surface in his statement that while 
"we can continue to think of an existing beyond ... it must of 
course always be of an experiential nature. If not a future 
experience of one's self or one's neighbor ... it must be an 

' Essays in Radical Empiricism, p. 130. 2 75.^ pp. 76, 79-80 ; cf. p. 40. 
3 76., p. 160. * lb., pp. 12-14. 6 75.^ p. 25. 

« lb., p. 250. 7 The Meaning of Truth, Pref., p. xii. 

8 Essays in Radical Empiricism, p. 195. 



224 THE PROBLEM OP KNOWLEDGE 

experience for itself/' as is maintained by the panpsychists.^ 
" Everything real must be experienceable somewhere." ^ Wher- 
ever there are real relations they must be felt as "matters of 
direct particular experience,"^ and wherever there are real 
creative activities, they must be immediately livedo 

W. T. Bush, influenced by Avenarius and James on the one 
hand and by Woodbridge on the other, ^ remains in a somewhat 
transitional position between immediate empiricism and the new 
realism. Like the typical new realist, he regards all the con- 
tent of experience as objective, and like some of them defines 
consciousness as that objective content which is directly acces- 
sible to but one observer.^ Where attention is not directed to 
such contents, but to others generally accessible, there is no 
consciousness.^ There is no "experience" save "empirical 
fact . . . the empirical aggregate thus far envisaged." ^ But 
he is reluctant to have this view called realism,^ and seems to 
distrust the new realism as holding to some sort of substance- 
doctrine.^^ 

John Dewey regards James's radical empiricism, according 
to which a content in one context is physical and in another 
context psychical, consciousness, as the most significant part 
of his philosophical doctrine. ^^ He himself has developed a 
very similar theory, which he calls immediate empiricism. 
Like Hodgson and James he claims that the philosopher has 
to analyze the content of immediate experience; philosophy 
is not metaphysics, but a purely positive science of phenomena.^^ 
The postulate of immediate empiricism is that things are what 

^ Essays in Radical Empiricism, pp. 88-9. ^ 75.^ p, igQ. 

3 The Meaning of Truth, p. xii. * Essays in Radical Empiricism, p. 182. 

6 Avenarius and the Standpoint of Pure Experience, pp. 72-3. 
^ lb., pp. 75-7; Journal of Philosophy, etc., Ill, 1906, p. 45. 

7 Journal of Philosophy, IV, 1907, p. 429. » lb., VI, p. 181. 
» 76. 10 lb., X, p. 668. 11 New York Times, June 9, 1912. 

^2 The Influence of Darwin on Philosophy, p. 303. Since writing this, I under- 
stand, Dewey has made the statement that philosophy has to choose between 
being poor science and being simply something essentially akin to literature. 
His latest statement on the subject, however, is to the effect that " one way of 
conceiving the problem of metaphysical inquiry as distinct from that of the 
special sciences " is "a way which settles upon the more ultimate traits of the world 
as defining its subject matter, but which frees these traits from confusion with 
ultimate origins and ultimate ends." Journal of Philosophy, XII, 1915, p. 345 ; 
italics mine. 



ANTECEDENTS OP THE NEW REALISM 225 

they are experienced as — not, as Hodgson put it, what they 
are known as; for this, according to Dewey, is the fallacious 
root of all the idealisms. ^ Although it is claimed that imme- 
diate empiricism is a methodological guide and not a principle 
from which any but some negative philosophical results can be 
deduced,^ it is offered as a way of showing the untenability of 
not only all the idealisms, but of epistemological dualism and 
of presentative realism or any other type of realistic doctrine 
save naive realism.^ 

This pragmatic realism Dewey is able to uphold only by 
virtue of his peculiar hard and fast distinction between experi- 
ence, perceptual or pre-perceptual, on the one hand, and the 
mental or conscious, and cognition, on the other. He repu- 
diates the idea that experience is necessarily psychological."^ 
*'When the realist conceives the perceptual occurrence as a 
case of knowledge or of presentation to a mind or knower, he 
lets the nose of the idealist camel into the tent."^ In other 
words, if perception is knowledge, or presentation to a knower, 
and a thing is what it is perceived (known) as, and nothing 
more, reality is nothing but contents of consciousness — the 
idealistic doctrine. On the contrary Dewey claims to hold 
to the naive realistic view, according to which noises, lights, 
etc., are thought of neither as mental existences (idealism) 
nor as things known (presentative realism), but as just things. 
It no more occurs to the ''plain man," he says, to think that 
things are in relation to mind than to think that they are 
mental. In fact, his attitude to them as things involves their 
not being in relation to mind.^ Now it seems clear that at 
this point Dewey has made a dogmatic negative application 
of the postulate of immediate empiricism in its idealistic form. 
He has assumed that because the thing is not consciously 
experienced, or thought of, as presented to one's self, it is 
therefore not so presented. This is a negative application of 
the "psychologist's fallacy " ; it assumes that a thing is not, in 
its existence independently of cognition, what it is not in and 

1 The Influence of Darwin on Philosophy, pp. 227-8. 2 j^,^ pp^ 238-9. 
3 Journal of Philosophy, II, 1905, pp. 324-6. 
< Philosophical Review, XVI, 1907, p. 422. 

6 Journal of Philosophy, VIII, 1911, p. 396. « 76., p. 397. 

Q 



226 THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE 

for cognitive consciousness. That this is what Dewey means 
to say is supported by the statement elsewhere that the psy- 
chologist brings states of consciousness into existence.^ The 
plain man ceases to be a naive realist in Dewey's sense of that 
term as soon as he is asked whether he was aware of the ob- 
jects when they were first perceived, before he was aware of 
any awareness. But there is surely no justification for the 
assertion that there is no knowing when there is no knowing of 
the knowing, unless it be the general principle of idealism, that 
there is nothing but what is known and is constituted in being 
known. Of course Dewey does not make the general statement 
of the idealistic principle. He simply employs the ideahstic 
way of thinking in this one instance, on the principle, one would 
think, that in committing the idealistic transgression "once 
doesn't count." This means, then, that Dewey is able to 
avoid ideahsm and retain what he calls pragmatic or naive 
realism, only by making a surreptitious use of idealism. Elim- 
inate the idealism explicitly from the premises, and yet you 
find it cropping out unmistakably in the conclusion. 

But Dewey's philosophy has been an influential factor to- 
ward realistic epistemological monism, largely because some 
of his followers have followed him afar off, and have not re- 
tained his view of ordinary perception as non-cognitive. With 
this omission they are able to take his pragmatic realism as a 
bona fide presentative reahsm. This is true of such expres- 
sions as that "to exist is not to be identified with the status of 
a cognized something," ^ that things need not always be known ,^ 
and especially his whole doctrine of an objective situation prior 
to consciousness,^ and the view that "knowing . . . happens 
to things in the natural course of their career." ^ 

We must conclude, then, that since Dewey's philosophy is 
not a realism, save at the expense of a fallacy, he has not 
really succeeded in being anything but a disguised psycho- 
logical idealist. What he does, in applying the principle of 
subjective ideahsm in order to hide his subjective ideahsm, 
makes so much noise that we cannot hear what he says, when 

1 Influence of Darwin, p. 248. ^ Journal of Philosophy, VI, 1909, p. 19. 
3 76., VII, 1910, p. 554. " Studies in Logical Theory, 1903, passim. 

^Journal of Philosophy, VIII, 1911, p. 554. 



ANTECEDENTS OF THE NEW REALISM 227 

he disavows idealism. As we have seen, it is only by first 
tacitly assuming a negative immediate empiricism (which 
means subjective idealism applied at least once) that he is 
able to achieve the appearance of having established a position 
which is neither subjective idealism nor dualism nor presenta- 
tive reaHsm. And furthermore, there are statements which 
mark him off clearly enough as no reahst. For instance, "that 
things and relations have existence and significance apart from 
the particular conditions under which they come into experi- 
ence," he rejects as 'Hhe static standpoint." ^ Again, "the 
quality of transition-towards, change-in-the-direction-of . . . 
cannot be included in the statement of reality qua earlier, but 
is only apprehended or realized in experience.'^ ^ The agree- 
ment of ideas with facts is the agreement or "correspondence 
between the purpose, plan, and its own execution, fulfilment," ^ 
or, in other words, an agreement of an idea with a content of 
immediate experience, and never with a reality independent 
of experience. And finally, "as long as the conclusion remains 
unchallenged, so long the object is as the conclusion describes 
it." ^ Zollner's lines "are divergent" when experienced as 
divergent, and parallel only when experienced as parallel.^ 
This doctrine that the object is what we seem to find it, or 
even what we think it, so long as it seems so, or so long as we 
think it is so, reveals the trail of the subjectivistic — or, we 
might even say, solipsistic — serpent. 

Dewey's immediatism and pragmatic realism have been 
especially influential in shaping the realistic thought of E. B. 
McGilvary and apparently of J. E. Boodin, as well as notice- 
ably also in the case of both W. P. Montague and W. B. Pitkin. 
Of these, Boodin demands special attention at this point, 
because, while his doctrines are more like those of James than 
like Dewey's, his philosophy may be regarded as transitional 
between the systems of James and Dewey on the one hand 
and the more typical neo-realists on the other. He calls his 
philosophical position pragmatic realism, but he means by 
this a more bona fide realism than that which Dewey calls by 
the same name. He maintains that the pragmatic method 

^ Influence of Darwin, p. 260. ^ Journal of Philosophy, III, 1906, p. 255. 

3 lb., IV, 1907, p. 202. « lb., VI, 1909, p. 17. » 75.^ n^ 1905, p. 397. 



228 THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE 

has been lost in the subjectivism of its advocates.^ ReaHsm 
he defines as meaning ''the reference to an object existing be- 
yond the apperceptive unity of momentary individual con- 
sciousness, and that the object can make a difference to this 
consciousness so as to be known." ^ While Dewey makes the 
objectivity of a whole content of perceptual experience depend 
upon its exercise of the function of control,^ Boodin holds that 
experience is insufficient as an account of reality,* and that it 
is an independently existing universe which is differentiated 
with reference to our purposive attitudes.^ Instead of Hodg- 
son's and James's expression ''known as," and Dewey's "ex- 
perienced as," he says that individual things are, indepen- 
dently of our consciousness or experience, what they are per- 
ceived as, and indefinitely more, they are what they must be 
taken as when we do take account of them in the realization of 
our purposes. Our purposes are indispensable for the signifi- 
cant differentiation of the world, but there are limits in the 
nature of independent reality which check an arbitrary selec- 
tion of that which is to be regarded as an individual thing.^ 
Now this seems to be genuine realism of a highly discriminat- 
ing and defensible variety; but there are some passages in 
Boodin's writings which "give us pause." For example, he 
has called his view empirical idealism, and has said that ob- 
jects presuppose creative purpose, and can become objects 
only for a will; that reahty is not complete without possible 
perception, as well as perception; that reals beyond our own 
consciousness are ejects, objects of thought or purposive will; 
that reality is knowable only so far as it is itself conceptual, 
and we share its inner meaning.^ Again he says: "Qualities 
are objective just in so far as we must take them as objective. 
If they do not help us to identify an object, they can no longer 
be called qualities. They must be reckoned on the side of 
value." ^ This becomes significant if viewed in connection 
with his doctrine that values depend upon the will, and so 

1 Journal of Philosophy, IV, 1907, p. 281. 

2 Truth and Reality, 1911, p. 251. ^Studies in Logical Theory, p. 76. 
* Journal of Philosophy, V, 1908, p. 367. s 75.^ jy, p. 535 ; IX, p. 9. 
6 76., IX, 1912, pp. 5-14 ; Truth and Reality, pp. 262-7. 

T Journal of Philosophy, IV, 1907, pp. 538-41. 
^Philosophical Review, XX, 1911, p. 395. 



ANTECEDENTS OF THE NEW REALISM 229 

upon consciousness, for their existence. ^ If we view these 
statements in connection with other passages in which it is 
maintained that consciousness constitutes no properties, makes 
no difference to reahty, save the difference of awareness,^ 
we seem to find the unintelhgible or self-contradictory doctrine 
that quahties which existed as such independently of any 
experience or consciousness of ours, do not exist as qualities, 
if they do not further our practical purposes. The contradic- 
tion is psychologically explained, but not logically removed, 
by the remark that things can have a double location, in their 
own existential contexts and in our contexts of significance ; ^ 
for the statement, ^'Qualities are objective just in so far as we 
must take them as objective" is either a frank expression of 
subjectivism, or else the first ^'objective" means existent in 
their own contexts, independently of our contexts of signifi- 
cance. There are only two ways for Boodin to remove the 
contradiction; either to return to Dewey's disguised psycho- 
logical idealism with its negative psychologist's fallacy, or to 
be more careful in the particular aspects of reality he makes 
dependent upon human purpose: 

G. S. Fuller ton is interesting as exemplifying in his writings 
of 1904, 1908, and 1912 the transition from an idealistic to a 
realistic epistemological monism.^ In his System of Metaphysics, 
he is still, as we have seen, on the ground of a modified Berkelei- 
anism. The real world, by which he means the world of the 
scientist, he characterizes as a complex construction of sensa- 
tions and imagined sensations, and so as existing in conscious- 
ness.^ The reality of the not-experienced is affirmed, but it 
is explained that this is only legitimate when understood as 
resting upon a convenient abstraction. Actually it has a place 
in that system of experiences, mine or another's, past, present, 
or future, actual or possible, which we construct and treat as 
if it were all present at one time in one actual experience.® 
This, of course, is simply a disguised psychological idealism, 
or an abstract idealism of the psychological positivistic type 7 

1 76., p. 402 ; Journal of Philosophy, V, 1908, pp. 226-8. 

2 76., V, 1908, pp. 226, 232-3. ' Philosophical Review, XX, 1911, p, 401. 

* 1904. 5 System of Metaphysics, pp. 108-17, 157, 375. 

• 7&., pp. 117-23. 7 ^. chs. VI, IX, supra. 



230 THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE 

In the essay entitled " The New ReaHsm/' ^ FuUerton makes 
some highly defensible assertions, which nevertheless leave his 
exact position ambiguous. There seems to be nothing in the 
essay which could not be accepted either by the thoroughgoing 
neo-realist or by any immediate empiricist whose fundamental 
idealism was well enough disguised. In his recent work, 
The World We Live In, however, and in his latest articles, he is 
unambiguously on the side of a realistic epistemological monism. 
The perceived object, secondary qualities and all, he holds 
to be as objective and external as atoms and electrons ;2 and 
the percept, he asserts, may cease, but the object persist.^ 

If the question be raised as to why in Germany, with Ave- 
narius and Wundt as immediate empiricists, a similar school of 
realistic epistemological monists has not been developed, the 
answer is to be found chiefly in the influence of Kant. Kuelpe, 
for instance, who took his point of departure from Wundt, 
has developed a realistic and rationalistic philosophy according 
to which independent reality is not immediately but only 
mediately known. Here the influence of the Kantian aprio- 
rism has operated to close the thoroughfare to any monistic 
realism. 

It may be remarked in passing that the fact of the genesis 
of the new realism from subjective ideahsm through immediate 
empiricism doubtless accounts for the constant polemic of the 
reahsts against subjective idealism, and also for their easy 
victory over this opponent. From the time of G. E. Moore's 
Refutation of Idealism,"^ most neo-realists have undertaken to 
expose the fallacies of idealism, generally identified with sub- 
jective idealism; but none have been more successful than 
R. B. Perry, whose exposure of the fallacy of inferring idealism 
from the fact of the egocentric predicament we have already 
noticed. 

Before closing this chapter we must refer to the other main 
factor in the production of the new realism, viz. disguised logical 
idealism. As we have seen, logical idealism is a form of ab- 

^ Essays . . , in Honor of William James, 1908. 
* The World We Live In, 1912, pp. 130, 146. 
3 Journal of Philosophy, X, 1913, p. 59. 
^Mind, N.S., XII, October, 1903. 



ANTECEDENTS OF THE NEW REALISM 231 

stractionism, it is the doctrine that independent reaUty is 
the idea, i.e. what we know only as an abstraction from reaUty. 
This position, however, is one of unstable equilibrium. If the 
abstraction were always consistently recognized, the logical 
idealism would pass over into psychological idealism, of either 
a Fichtean or a neo-Kantian type. But if, as usually happens, 
the abstraction is abstracted from, taken abstractly, the result 
is a disguised logical idealism, which, by an almost inevitable 
but fallacious simple conversion, becomes logical realism, the 
doctrine that ''universals" are realities. Thus it would ap- 
pear that the two principal processes by which the new 
realism has been produced have been, first, the homoeopathic 
treatment of psychological idealism, and second, the homoeo- 
pathic treatment of logical idealism. On the one hand sub- 
jective idealism has been applied to the subject. On the other 
hand logical or abstract idealism has been taken abstractly; 
the fact of the abstraction has been abstracted from. Then 
the former (disguised psychological idealism) is interpreted in 
such a way as abstracts from the original psychological ideal- 
ism in the case of the object, and the latter (disguised logical 
idealism) by fallacious simple conversion. The results are 
fused, and the new realism in its first crude form is the result. 
The effect of the disguised logical idealism is seen especially 
in those neo-realists who have been deeply influenced by mathe- 
matical studies, of whom the leader is Bertrand Russell.^ 

^ Meinong's " Gegenstandstheorie " promises to be increasingly influential in 
the future development of the new realism. 



CHAPTER XI 
The Neo-Realistic Doctrine of Secondary Qualities 

The original idea of the new realists seems to have been to 
arrive at an absolute monism in epistemology by the opposite 
route to that taken by the idealists. As the idealistic abso- 
lute monists had said in effect, There are no things, but only 
ideas, so these would-be realistic absolute monists have wanted 
to be able to say, There are no ideas, images or what not, but 
only things. In absolute epistemological monism and in 
that alone, it was felt by both extremists, lay the only logical 
solution of the problem of knowledge. Man can know ideas, 
and if reality is nothing but idea, man can know it, thought 
the idealist. If we can maintain that there are no ideas, 
images, or other mental constructs, to come between us and 
reality, then, thought the original new realist, the knowledge 
problem disappears, because in all our conscious life we are 
in immediate cognitive relation with independently existing 
things. Let us see whether the neo-realist has been able to 
carry out his ambitious programme of establishing a realistic 
absolute monism in epistemology. 

Perhaps the most characteristic doctrine of the new realism, 
and that which reveals most clearly the original intention to 
be a realistic absolute monism, is that of the external and 
independent reality of '^ secondary" or sense-qualities. In- 
dependent reality of the primary qualities is of course included 
or presupposed. Ideally the neo-realist ought to affirm the 
independent objectivity of all sense-qualities ever experienced 
under any circumstances, however special; but at this point 
there arises a differentiation among the members of the school. 
Some, while explicitly maintaining that at least some sense- 
qualities are independently real, are either non-committal or 
have expressed themselves ambiguously on the question as 
to whether or not all sense-qualities ever experienced are to be 

232 



NEO-REALISTIC DOCTRINE OF QUALITIES 233 

similarly interpreted. Others again have held that only some 
of the sense-qualities experienced are independently real ; 
while, finally, a faithful few have the boldness to maintain, 
apparently or even explicitly, that absolutely all sense-qualities 
ever experienced have full independent reality, as well as many 
others which have never been experienced. This whole prob- 
lem becomes most acute in connection with the question of 
hallucinations and other deceptions of the senses, and several 
members of the new school frankly acknowledge difficulty at 
this point. Because of the crucial importance of this matter, a 
somewhat detailed examination of the various attitudes taken 
and explanations offered seems desirable. 

F. J. E. Woodbridge holds ''that consciousness and knowl- 
edge do actually disclose to us that which is in no way depend- 
ent on consciousness or knowledge for its existence or char- 
acter," and bases this upon the alleged fact that although 
objects need to be in consciousness for us to know what they 
are, what they are is never found to be dependent upon their 
being in consciousness, because ''in consciousness," applying 
equally to all known objects, is not a means of distinguishing 
them from each other. ^ But this argument is manifestly 
unsound. Why should it be assumed that there is only one 
kind of consciousness? If, as we shall see, "consciousness" 
may be interpreted as a general term for several specifically 
different sorts of psychical activity, it is quite conceivable that 
some of the discovered differences between objects may be 
due to these different kinds of psychical activity. But Wood- 
bridge, unable to see in consciousness anything but a relation 
which remains absolutely uniform in all instances, feels justified 
in asserting that "things sail into it [consciousness] and out 
again without any ^ break in the continuity of their being." ^ 
The only difference between primary and secondary qualities 
is that the latter "require the intervention of some special 
structure [presumably an organism with special sense-organs] 
if their appropriate causality is to be effective." ^ Reality is 
always "precisely what it appears to be." ^ We are never 

1 Journal of Philosophy, II, 1905, pp. 122-3. 2 italics mine. 

3 Journal of Philosophy, VII, 1910, p. 416. " 76., VI, 1909, p. 453. 

6 Ih., X, 1913, p. 14 ; cf . Philosophical Review, XII, 1903, p. 369. 



234 THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE 

mistaken in taking appearances as reality, but only in acting 
in certain unfortunate ways in view of certain appearances/ 
Things are different under different conditions of relation to 
other physical things, including different media with different 
powers of refraction, different retinas or the same retina in 
different conditions at different times, etc. ; but the particular 
qualities of things are not different according as they are or 
are not known, or ''in consciousness." ^ Both the color- 
bhnd and the normal perceive the thing as it is — under dif- 
ferent physiological conditions.^ A thing is neither all of its 
appearances combined, nor any one of them exclusively, but 
''every one of them in every instance which can be defined." ^ 

Now according to these last statements the above distinc- 
tion which Woodbridge makes between primary and secondary 
qualities is seen to be inadequate. If a thing is not all of its 
appearances combined, but only each at its own time and under 
its own special conditions, then not only is the "effectiveness" 
of the "appropriate causality" of secondary qualities depend- 
ent upon the object being in a certain relation to sense-organs 
of a certain sort ; the very existence of those secondary quahties 
is Ukewise thus dependent. At this juncture, then, Wood- 
bridge, besides being faced with the necessity of withdrawing a 
former statement, if he would claim consistency, is confronted 
with the dilemma of having to choose between a realism so 
critical as to refrain from ascribing independent reality to any 
sense-quality, and an extreme pluralism such as has recently 
been developed by Bertrand Russell. The former alternative 
would lead him, we beheve, in the right direction. The other 
alternative, that of utter pluraUsm, will be considered when 
we come to examine the views of Russell. 

The realism of S. Alexander, Hke that of Woodbridge, is 
fundamentally dogmatic and leads him unavoidably in the 
direction of what is practically the same self-contradiction. 
He holds to the reality and activity of mind, but claims that it 
produces nothing but the knowledge-reZa^iow between itself and 

' Journal of Philosophy, X, 1913, pp. 7, 8. « /&., pp. 7, 8, 9, 606. 

^ "Perception and Epistemology," in ^ssa^/s . . . in Honor of William James, 
1908, pp. 164-5. 

* Journal of Philosophy, X, 1913, p. 13. 



NEO-REALISTIC DOCTRINE OF QUALITIES 235 

its content, and the dislocation of elements occurring in illusory 
or erroneous experience. In reaction against the idealistic 
presupposition that what one apprehends must be dependent 
for its existence on his mind, he goes to the other extreme and 
interprets the fact of experience, defined as the compresence of 
mind and an object which is not mind, as meaning not only 
that the percept is never anything but the independently real 
physical thing perceived, but that even images and judgments 
are to be classed, not as peculiarly mental, but as fully physical.^ 
For example, the dream-apparition is spatial, and has other 
physical properties quite as much as has the normal percept. 
Primary qualities, or the categories of things, differ from sec- 
ondary qualities only in that they are qualities of ourselves as 
well as of things, whereas the latter are qualities of things 
only. Image and percept are the same physical object in 
different forms. Illusory and erroneous elements in any 
appearance are introduced into that particular collocation by 
mind, but these elements introduced are always non-mental 
and independently real. Mental activity may dislocate the 
real object from its place in things and refer it to a context to 
which it does not belong. For instance, when I fancy a horse's 
body and complete it with a man's head, the head exists in 
reality, but not upon a horse's body. Or, when a hot metal 
touches a ''cold spot" on one's skin, it is the coldness of a 
cold thing which he feels, though not the coldness of the metal.^ 
But there is very evidently an inconsistency here. If I put a 
real man's head upon a real horse's body, then there is a real 
object with a man's head and a horse's body. If the centaur 
is not real, its head is not real, nor is its body. But this incon- 
sistency is ignored by Alexander, who cheerfully maintains 
on the one hand that error arises not from unreality, but from 
misdescription,^ and on the other hand that when an object 
is seen differently, it is different and looks different, and yet 
its full reality is the continuous totality of its partial appear- 
ances, each of which is also independently real.^ It seems 
impossible to reconcile these statements with each other. If 

1 Mind, N.S., XXI, 1912, p. 2. 

2/6., p. 18; Proc. Aristot. Soc, 1909-10, pp. 16-24. 

^Proc. Aristot. Soc, 1909-10, p. 25. * lb., pp. 33, 34. 



236 THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE 

the real object is the totaHty of its different appearances, and 
there is illusion in some of its appearances, so that these appear- 
ances are not, as collocations, real, then the ''real object" is 
not fully real. The other self-refutation of Alexander's system 
we have already noted in the specific instance of the centaur; 
but, stated in general terms, it is the argument that if, as is 
supposed, an appearance is an actual, though mentally pro- 
duced, collocation of real elements, it can never be unreal, 
which, however, is asserted in the case of illusory appearances. 
Or, conversely, if the illusory appearance, as a collocation of 
elements, is unreal, the elements of that collocation must also be 
unreal, and it becomes untrue to say that error is not due to 
unreality, both of which conclusions are contrary to our phi- 
losopher's previous supposition. 

G. E. Moore's position is similar to that of Alexander, but 
it is stated with greater caution. Deeper than his positive 
arguments for realism is his rejection of the basing of an argu- 
ment for idealism upon a confusion of sensation with sense- 
content. The sensation of blue, he insists, is an awareness of 
blue, and the awareness of blue is not itself blue. To say, 
with the idealist, that ''Blue exists" is identical in meaning 
with "Blue + consciousness exists" is a self-contradiction. 
We can and must conceive the existence of blue as something 
quite distinct from the existence of the sensation, so that blue 
might possibly exist, and yet the sensation of blue not exist.^ 
This does not carry one so far, however, as Moore seems to 
think. He dogmatically assumes that sensation is nothing but 
bare awareness, whereas, if it should turn out to be a productive 
psychical activity, it might be maintained that blue exists only 
when there is sensation of blue, without falling into any con- 
fusion of the sense-quality with the qualities of sensation 
(sensing). Moore, however, because he does not consider this 
possibility with reference to consciousness, combines the highly 
defensible proposition that unless we know things as they are 
in themselves, we have no knowledge at all, with the sufficiently 
obvious proposition that not only time, space, and causality, 
but colors and sounds also are things of which we are aware, 
and from this synthesis evolves the unnecessary dogma that 

1 "The Refutation of Idealism," Mind, N.S., XII, 1903, pp. 445-9. 



NEO-REALISTIC DOCTRINE OP QUALITIES 237 

sounds and colors exist independently of our sensations (aware- 
ness) of them.^ 

But besides basing his realism upon his critique of idealism 
and the rejection of agnosticism, Moore has a constructive 
argument. This is to the effect that if we have any good 
reason for believing in the existence of perceptions in other 
minds, we have just as good reason for believing in the inde- 
pendent existence of ''sense-contents." It is natural to sup- 
pose that the speaker would not see his audience listening, if 
his audience did not hear him speaking. But this natural 
supposition would be ungrounded if there were not some sense- 
qualities, some sounds and colors, existing independently of 
awareness of them; because otherwise each subject would be 
aware of nothing but its own perceptual awareness, and mere 
self-observation can give no basis for affirming the existence of 
other selves.^ Now this argument, in so far as it is valid, would 
go to prove that if other minds exist, some other objects, such 
as can be perceived, also exist. But to affirm that these other 
objects must be sense-qualities is dogmatic ; especially when we 
remember that sensation needs not to be interpreted as a bare 
awareness, but may be viewed as a productive psychical activity. 
Moreover, while Moore closes his discussion with the studiously 
modest assertion that, if we are to have good reason for believing 
in the existence of other persons, some of the sensible qualities 
which we perceive must really exist in the places in which we 
perceive them, and that therefore there are grounds for sus- 
pense of judgment as to whether what we see does not really 
exist,^ he is evidently prepared to go much further. He de- 
fends the view that two different colors, both independently 
real, may occupy the same space at the same time.^ This is 
apparently intended to open the way for the thesis that all 
sensible qualities, even those seen in hallucinatory experience 
or by the color-blind, are independently real. But is the posi- 
tion tenable ? One and the same person may perceive different 
colors in the same space at different times, and different persons 

1 Proc. Aristot. Soc, 1903-4, pp. 136, 140. 

'"The Nature and Reality of Objects of Perception," Proc. Aristot. Soc, 
1905-6, pp. 68-122. 

' lb., pp. 125, 127. « lb., p. 125. 



238 THE PROBLEM OF^ KNOWLEDGE 

may perceive different colors in the same space at the same 
time ; but no one person has ever perceived two different colors 
occupying the same space at the same time, nor can one imag- 
ine such a possibility. Why, then, should we suppose that 
what has never been perceived and cannot be imagined to be 
perceptible exists as an independent reality, especially in view 
of the possibility of interpreting sensation (sensing) as produc- 
tive activity, and thus removing all motive for such a supposi- 
tion? 

E. B. McGilvary's realism is the result of a reaction, largely 
under the influence of James and Dewey, ^ from his former 
Hegelianism.2 In returning to realism he rejects the dualistic 
variety ; ^ but, accepting the epistemological monism of im- 
mediate empiricism as valid, although he tends to identify this 
immediatism somewhat too closely ^ with the older psychologi- 
cal idealism, he regards it as valuable in that it paves the way 
for a monistic type of realism.^ James's psychology he criti- 
cises as confusing thought and its object ; ^ in opposition to 
this he himself stresses the important observation that the ob- 
ject of consciousness is not necessarily, as such, a state of con- 
sciousness.^ In his '^ Prolegomena to a Tentative Realism" ^ he 
argues that since the red which I sometimes see is observed 
by my friend to exist at times when I am not conscious of it, 
it is a perfectly possible feat of thought to regard red as capable 
of existence independently of all consciousness.^ It is quite 
conceivable that it should exist when unperceived, without 
having to exist double when perceived.^" ''If sensum is sense 
datum, then why may not sensihile be sense dandum f And why 
may not such a dandum exist before it becomes a datum, much 
as a toy which I buy a week before Christmas exists as a dandum 
till Christmas Eve, when it becomes a datum? This change 
from dandum to datum does not make the toy any more real." ^^ 
Instead of possibility of perception being the meaning of reality, 

1 Journal of Philosophy, IV, 1907, p. 691. 

2 See Mind, N.S., VII, 1898, and X, 1901. 

3 Journal of Philosophy, IV, 1907, pp. 452-8, 591-2, 599-601. 

4 See Dewey in Philosophical Review, XVI, 1907, pp. 419-22. 
6 Philosophical Review, XVI, 1907, pp. 266-84, 422-3. 

« Journal of Philosophy, IV, 1907, p. 229. ^ Ih., pp. 453-4. 

8 Ih., pp. 449-58. 9 Ih., pp. 449-50. i" Ih., p. 452. " /&., p. 458. 



NEO-REALISTIC DOCTRINE OF QUALITIES 239 

that possibility is more obviously taken as depending upon a 
reality which might be perceived if the conditions were favor- 
able.^ Finally, McGilvary ventures to claim that realism is 
proved by the fact that objects are temporally independent of 
the awareness of them.^ He feels obliged to admit, however, 
that not all qualities perceived can be regarded as numerically 
identical with the actual qualities.^ At the same time he claims 
that the pragmatic method is adequate to eliminate all illusory 
elements.^ 

More recently, as if he had conceded too much, McGilvary 
has definitely taken up the problem of illusion, hallucination, 
and kindred phenomena, with the object, apparently, of show- 
ing that all secondary qualities may conceivably be independent 
of awareness of them. The phenomena of color-blindness are 
explained by suggesting that consciousness is a unique selective 
relation, which, in this case, omits certain qualities of the 
external object.^ '^ Deceptions" of the senses are realistically 
interpretable, if we hold that not all space-occupying objects 
are space-monopolizing. There is no sufficient reason for deny- 
ing that the different colors seen in the same place at the same 
time by different o!)servers are both independently real.® The 
difficulty encountered in the temporal difference between the 
perceived and the real star is glossed over by means of a verbal 
distinction. The observer's body and the star are to be re- 
garded as contemporary but not simultaneous, contemporaneity 
being defined as synchronousness within the same durational 
unit, whatever that unit may be, e.g. within the same day, or 
year, or century.'^ But the difficulties involved in the theory of 
the independent existence of sense-qualities are so real that 
McGilvary is constrained to acknowledge the ''tentative" 
character of his realistic doctrine. Idealism is not demon- 
strably false, he says, but it is not justified in claiming to be the 
only tenable or moral theory; and similarly, realism is not 
demonstrably true, but it is a promising hypothesis whose 
difficulties are disappearing. ^ 

1 lb., p. 592. 2 7?,.^ p. 600. 3 ijj^^ p. 684. 

4 lb., p. 692. 5 Philosophical Review, XXI, 1912, p. 171. 

^ lb., pp. 161-6 ; cf. Moore, supra, and our criticism of tjie view. 
■^ lb., p. 170. »Ib., p. 153, 



240 THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE 

But even this modest assertion is, it would seem, too optimis- 
tic. McGilvary is very far from having satisfactorily cleared 
up all the difficulties which beset a realistic absolute epistemo- 
logical monism.^ He once appealed, as we have seen, to the 
pragmatic test in this connection ; to pragmatism then let him 
go. Why should we seek to reinstate hallucinatory elements 
as independently real, when they have already been rejected 
by common sense on practical grounds? But the pragmatic 
method cuts deeper still. Not only are there experienced 
sense-qualities whose independent existence we cannot do with ; 
there are no sense-qualities whose independent existence we 
cannot do without. Physical continuity and causality are 
sufficiently provided for on the theory of the independent 
reality of primary qualities and relations. In view, therefore, 
of the practical identity, psychologically speaking, of the 
normally perceived and the hallucinatory sense-quality, it 
seems uncritical to cling to the theory of the independent exist- 
ence of only some of the secondary qualities. 

The extreme development of the neo-realistic doctrine of 
secondary qualities is to be found in an article by T. Percy 
Nunn 2 and in the most recent phases of Bertrand RusselFs 
philosophy.^ Nunn explains the origin of the belief in what 
he calls "psychical sensations" as due to the pragmatic consid- 
eration of economy in the number of the qualities of common 
bodies, and the plausible assumption that since some of my 
experiences (pleasures, memories, etc.) are shared by me alone, 
the same is true of all experiences.^ His own view is that "sen- 
sations," as representative mental entities, need not be postu- 
lated. Both primary and secondary qualities of bodies exist 
in them, whether any one's senses perceive them or no, and 
exist as perceived.^ The superiority of the primary qualities 
is due simply to the readiness with which their determinations 
are measurable, the same being true only of temperature among 
secondary qualities.^ Whatever the conditions of perceptual 

1 See A. O. Lovejoy, Journal of Philosophy, X, 1913, pp. 32-43. 

2 "Are Secondary Qualities Independent of Perception?" Proc. Aristot. 5oc., 
1909-10. 

3 Our Knowledge of the External World as a Field for Scientific Method in Phi- 
losophy, 1914, pp. 63-126. 

* Proc. Aristot. Soc, 1909-10, pp. 199-201. » lb., pp. 191-2. « 76., p. 217. 



NEO-REALISTIC DOCTRINE OF QUALITIES 241 

selection of qualities may be, these conditions never affect the 
character of the qualities perceived. ^ The difference to the 
object observed made by looking through a special glass is 
observable only at the eye-piece ; but those special qualities, 
equally with all the others ever experienced, exist whether 
perceived or not.^ The buttercup actually owns as ''coordinate 
substantive features" all the colors that may be presented under 
different conditions.^ All the diverse sounds of the whistle 
of a^ moving motor-car which may be heard by persons in dif- 
ferent positions are emitted by the whistle, the thing that is 
really sounding being the air in each place where a sound is, or 
might be, heard. ^ All the hotnesses, of indefinite number, 
perceived or perceivable, around a body of high temperature, 
different as they may be according as the previous state of one's 
body is different, are actually owned by the hot thing and dis- 
posed spatially about it.'^ The straight staff which appears 
bent in a pool is both straight and bent, whether perceived or 
not.® What is needed, it is claimed, is a wider conception of 
the "thing." ' 

In appreciation of this theory, it may be said that it is valu- 
able as showing the results of a courageous attempt to carry 
out in the most rigorous fashion the fundamental idea of the 
new realism, viz. that of an absolute epistemological monism 
without idealism, with its corollary, the absolute externality 
of the conscious relation.^ In adverse criticism it must be 
urged, however, that inasmuch as Nunn holds to the reahty 
and activity of the psychical subject, his theory of secondary 
qualities violates both the principle of parsimony and its cor- 
rective, the principle of pragmatism and common sense. It 
would be more in accord with both science and common sense 
— as will be shown more fully in the later discussion — to 
regard all secondary qualities as psychical products. More- 
over, Nunn has to acknowledge that for the problem of error 
and illusion he can find no satisfactory solution.^ In referring 
to sense-experiences which seem to guarantee the existence 
of what can be proved not to exist, he naively remarks, 

» 76., pp. 192, 193. 2 75.^ p. 206. 3 lb., p. 203. 

4 76., p. 204. 6 lb., pp. 205-6. e 76., p. 209. 

» 76., p. 206. 8 See Ch. XIII, infra. » Proc. Anstot. Soc, 1909-10, p. 207. 
R 



242 THE PROBLEM OP KNOWLEDGE 

''Why error is 'permitted' is a problem no philosophy has 
solved." 1 

Bertrand Russell has very recently so modified his philo- 
sophical position that whereas formerly he could scarcely be 
called one of the new realists so far as his doctrine of the quali- 
ties of matter was concerned, he is now as much a neo-reaUst 
as Percy Nunn, and has worked up his doctrines into a much 
more fully integrated system. This change has taken place 
since the publication of his book, The Problems of Philosophy, 
in 1912. In that book he expressed himself to the effect that 
what the senses immediately tell us is not the truth about the 
object as it is apart from us, but only the truth about certain 
sense-data, which, so far as we can see, are not independent 
objects, but depend upon the relations betw^een us and the 
object. Thus what we directly see and feel is merely " appear- 
ance," which we believe to be a sign of some " reality " behind. ^ 
In a sense we can never prove external reality, but there is no 
reason for supposing solipsism true ; we feel the need of a physi- 
cal object to be the same object for different people ; we have 
an instinctive belief in an external world, and the simplest 
hypothesis is to suppose there exists a world of independent 
physical objects.^ But while following instinctive beHef and 
common-sense metaphysics with regard to the proposition that 
a physical world exists, Russell could find no way of reaching 
the physical object and the physical space of physics, except 
by an inference which left their nature unknown and only 
certain of their logical relations discoverable. "We can know 
nothing," he had to confess, "of what physical space is like 
in itself." ^ The idea that independent reality has some 
medium color, he rejected as groundless, although admitting 
that he could not refute the doctrine.^ 

But Russell now claims that since the writing of the Prob- 
lems of Philosophy he has made the discovery that the physi- 
cal object and the physical space of physics can be constructed 
as series of classes of sense-data and sensibilia — the latter being 
particulars analogous to sense-data, but not actually perceived. 
The immediate data of sense are now regarded as absolutely 

1 Proc. Aristot. Soc, 1909-10, pp. 210-11. 2 j^^^ Problems of Philosophy, 

pp. 23^. 8 76., pp. 27-37. * lb., p. 49. ^ /&., p. 55. 



NEO-REALISTIC DOCTRINE OF QUALITIES 243 

real as they appear to us; they are not mental, but physical, 
the ultipiate subject-matter of physics. The common sense 
notion of fairly permanent things, recognized as being a con- 
struction, not a datum, is now rejected as 'Hhe metaphysics 
of savages." By the use, it is claimed, of '^ Occam's razor," 
the inferred entities of common sense are replaced by com- 
pounds, or classes, or series of sense-data and sensibilia. The 
"momentary state of a thing" is a correlated set of aspects, 
perceived or unperceived. Places are constituted by relations 
to surrounding objects, and any particular location may be 
defined as a perspective where two series of perspectives meet. 
An instant is a class or group of events all simultaneous with 
each other, but not with anything else. Thus Russell is now 
at one with the boldest of the neo-realists in declaring that the 
whole world of what are to us sense-data and sensibilia might 
be exactly as it is if there were no minds. ^ 

The main criticism to be made against Russell's philosophy 
at this point is that he has swung from an absolute dualism to 
an absolute monism in epistemology, because he saw no other 
way of escape from an almost total agnosticism with reference 
to the physical world. The desperateness of his former condi- 
tion is reflected in the desperate remedy to which he has had 
recourse, cutting himself off absolutely from common sense, 
for which offence he salves his conscience by applying to the 
common sense view the epithet, ''metaphysics of savages." 
It would seem as though metaphysical doctrines which were 
first learned in the immemorial past, and have stood the test 
of practice ever since, are, if they can be shown to be logically 
tenable, to say the least, second to none in respectability. 
What we shall maintain in a later connection is that a critical 
monism is possible within the limits of a realistic epistemology, 
which is truer to the principle of parsimony than Russell's extreme 
pluralism, with its multiplication ad indefinitum, of '' sensihilia,'* 
and which is also in full accord with a scientifically informed 
common sense. If this our contention can be shown to be valid, 
Russell's "discovery" cannot be more than a second best. 

1 Our Knowledge of the External World as a Field for Scientific Method in Phi- 
losophy, 1914, Lectures III and IV ; cf . "The Relation of Sense-Data to Physics,'' 
Scientia, Vol. XVI, No. XXXVI, July, 1914. 



244 THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE 

Superficially considered, Russell's new doctrine seems to have 
the merit of being at least able to get rid of the hitherto in- 
soluble problem (as it has seemed from the point of view of 
realistic absolute epistemological monism) of how the apparent 
perception of unreal objects, as in hallucination, is to be ac- 
counted for. ''What is called the unreality of an immediate 
object," he says, ''must always be the unreality of some other 
object inferred from the immediate object and described by 
reference to it."^ In other words, hallucinations and illusions 
are really cases of the erroneous interpretation of reality (" sensi- 
bilia ") experienced. But this solution of the problem is more 
apparent than real. Besides what has just been said as to its 
violation of the principle of parsimony, Russell's theory, it may 
be added, would cancel not a single instance of what may be 
called, in a broad sense of the term, an experience of the unreal ; 
and the problem of error, now numerically aggravated, still 
awaits a solution. At this point, it would seem, Russell can go 
on in one or the other of two directions. Either he can do as 
Holt has done and affirm the self-contradictory nature of reality, 
or else he can develop further his insight that error is "not an 
instance of a dual relation" (in the sense in which valid knowledge 
is) . This latter course is the one, in our opinion, which he ought 
to take ; but it would lead him to posit, first in the case of error, 
but thereafter in other cases also, a creative psychical activity. 
But Russell's acknowledgment of the " mental" character of the 
subject of acquaintance ought to make it comparatively easy 
for him to accept this view. And having once adopted the 
hypothesis of a creative psychical activity, he would find that 
its application to "sensation" would immediately open up the 
way for an epistemologically monistic realism, without the 
necessity of positing the independent reality of a single sense- 
quality.2 

Woodbridge and Alexander, Nunn and Russell, are very 
uncompromising in their realistic interpretation of secondary 
qualities. There are other realistic epistemological monists 
whose position, whether more defensible or not, is more moder- 
ate. We shall refer to the views of two of these, viz. L. T. Hob- 

1 Monist, XXIV, 1914, p. 589 ; d.Our Knowledge of the External World, pp. 85 ff . 
» See Ch. XIV, infra. 



NEO-REALISTIC DOCTRINE OF QUALITIES 245 

house and A. Wolf. Hobhouse was one of the earliest of the 
writers who may with fairness be classed as belonging to the 
new realistic school, and he has written with great sobriety 
of judgment and cogency of argument. His doctrine of the 
sense-quaUties of objects, however, is one of the least satis- 
factory parts of his great work, The Theory of Knowledge} He 
recognizes that not all sense-qualities can be regarded as inde- 
pendent existences without contradiction, and so explains the 
rejected ones as due to "some reaction of our nervous organiza- 
tion on a given physical agent." ^ This explanation he would 
apply not only to illusions, but to some at least among the 
secondary qualities, such as the sensed-quality of heat. In the 
case of feeling also, esse is percipi.^ But Hobhouse refuses to 
regard all secondary qualities as dependent upon perception. 
Failing evidence that we were created as a joke, to be " taken 
in," he declares : "So far as my perceptions tolerate and support 
one another, I take them as correct in fact ; and if the synthesis 
of these perceptions involves me in the belief that the facts they 
report are external to my consciousness, I accept their evidence." 
The one test is that of "consilience." Hobhouse here illus- 
trates his position by reference to the rise in pitch of the shriek 
of a locomotive as it rushes towards one observer, and the fall 
in its pitch as heard by a person standing at the other end of 
the platform. "Here," he says, "is a discrepancy which is 
rectified at one stroke by a simple deduction from the theory 
of sound . . . leading ... us to hold . . . that the pitch in 
fact remains constant. If the whole mass of our perceptions 
were systematized after this fashion, the corrected values which 
they would give would be the true external order." ^ 

But this selection, while it may seem to have, when super- 
ficially considered, a certain pragmatic justification, is mani- 
festly, from the standpoint of epistemological theory, quite 
arbitrary. There is neither physical nor psychological basis 
for the selection of any particular shade of the buttercup from 
noonday sunlight to twilight, or the sound of the whistle as 
heard by the engine-driver or by either one of the bystanders, 
as the one real, independently existent color or sound of the 

1 1896. 2 The Theory of Knowledge, p. 525. 

3 lb., pp. 525, 534-5. " lb., pp. 530-1. 



246 THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE 

object. And if, as we shall maintain, another theory is avail- 
able which would make any such selection unnecessary, even 
Hobhouse's moderate and mediating position will have to be 
rejected like the others as untenable. 

A. Wolf feels the need of moderating the extreme views of 
Alexander and Moore, although he is in fundamental sympathy 
with their point of view. He undertakes 'Ho defend natural 
realism as far as possible." ^ He has little faith in the efficacy 
of Descartes's method of doubt. "Doubt everything and you 
may as well doubt whether you are really doubting." ''Per- 
ception," he admits, "is not always true, nor does it give us the 
whole truth, but from it we start and by it we are guided ; and 
unless we rely on the guidance of normal perception, the very 
ground of knowledge is removed from under our feet." ^ It is 
simply because some human experiences have not been normal, 
Wolf points out, that natural reaHsm has ever been questioned.^ 
The obvious suggestion, then, is that we retain our natural 
reaHsm, or real presentationism, for normal perception, while 
another explanation — representationism — is adopted for the 
abnormal experiences. The former would explain the fact of 
knowledge ; the latter, the fact of error ."^ Moreover, representa- 
tion is a fact in all cases of memory and imagination, ^ so that 
it seems to Wolf only a slight theoretical extension of the field 
of a function which we already know to be real in other cases. 

Now the trouble with this view, as will appear more fully 
when we examine its account of consciousness, is that it insists 
upon setting up an absolute difference of relationship (of the 
content of experience to the subject) where psychological science 
finds an essential identity. In so far as we have not already 
adequately criticised this point of view in our criticism of Hob- 
house, we will endeavor to do so when we come to speak of 
Wolf's theory of consciousness. For the present we may simply 
indorse the suggestion, offered in non-committal fashion by 
A. 0. Lovejoy, that Wolf's position is "a weak and untenable 
compromise between two more extreme doctrines." ^ 

1 "Natural Realism and Present Tendencies in Philosophy," Proc. Aristot. 
Soc, 1908-9, p. 146. 

2/6., p. 148. 3/6., p. 150. "76., p. 171. ^ lb., p. 162. 

'"On the Existence of Ideas," Johns Hopkins University Circular, 1914, 
No. 3, p. 52. 



NEO-REALISTIC DOCTRINE OP QUALITIES 247 

Among the other new realists we find nothing appreciably 
better on the subject of secondary qualities and abnormal 
perception than in those whose views we have examined. In 
fact their treatment is on the whole less satisfactory, in that the 
problem is either not given serious and conclusive treatment, 
or is dealt with in rather ambiguous fashion. Fullerton, for 
example, after censuring Locke for having '^ scraped the world" 
bare of all its colors, sounds, odors, and tastes,^ asserts that these 
*' so-called secondary qualities of bodies do belong to the bodies, 
as they seem to." ^ The physical must be treated as physical 
only, and not transmuted into something mental.^ Now Ful- 
lerton is right enough in holding that the ''sense-qualities" are 
qualities of the physical object, and not of the ''sensation" or of 
the mind ; but that is not quite the question. Do these quali- 
ties belong to the object when it is not perceived, or only when 
and as perceived? Fullerton seems to assume that since the 
qualities "belong" to the object when it is perceived, they 
belong to it permanently — except as it may be changed physi- 
cally, not psychically. At any rate this is his position ; ^ but 
the special difficulties it encounters in all cases of perceptual 
error are practically ignored. He seems to think it sufficient 
to remark that some single experiences are misleading to men 
at a certain stage of the development of their experience of the 
world, ^ and that language is not adjusted to what present them- 
selves in the experience of men generally as exceptional phe- 
nomena.^ But the crucial question for the neo-realist at this 
point is how qualities of whose compresence in the thing no 
one has ever had or could conceivably have an experience, be- 
cause of their mutually exclusive character, can actually inhere 
simultaneously in the independent object. 

J. E. Boodin's deliverance on the status of secondary quali- 
ties furnishes a good illustration of the incompatibility of 
realism with pragmatism as a theory of reality. (That there is an 
essential element in pragmatism as a theory of truth which is 
not incompatible with realism, we shall attempt to show later.) 
He says that qualities must be taken as objective, if they enable 

1 The World We Live In, p. 130. 2 76., p. 146. 3 75.^ p. 126. 

4 Cf. Journal of Philosophy, X, 1913, pp. 59, 62, 440. 

6 The World We Live In, p. 160. « 76., p. 162. 



248 THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE 

us to identify and predict the things with which we must deal ; 
and inasmuch as the so-called secondary qualities may be fully 
as important in this as the primary, as when the odor of a gas 
may be the means of its identification, such secondary qualities 
must be taken as objective. If they do not help us in such 
identification, they are not to be regarded as qualities of the 
object. Qualities are objective just in so far as we must take 
them so.^ Now if by '^objective" Boodin means independently 
real, it is clear enough that objective quahties cannot be made 
any more or less so by the way in which we take them. If, 
however, '^ objective" is intended to mean ^mv^ly functioning as 
object within a total content which is dependent upon being experi- 
enced, then Boodin is at this point no realist at all, but a dis- 
guised psychological idealist, as most of the pragmatists are. 

When we come to examine the views of the six ''program- 
mists," who have come to be regarded as the special sponsors 
and apologists of the neo-realistic movement, we find their 
treatment of the problem of secondary qualities peculiarly un- 
satisfying. In the introductory essay of their recent joint 
publication. The New Realism, a chapter which is given out as 
expressing the opinions common to all six of the collaborators, we 
read the statement that sensible qualities are among the simple 
constituents of the presumably independently real world. ^ 
But when we come to look for an adequate defence of this thesis 
in the light of the various "exceptional phenomena" and 
abnormalities of perception, we are doomed to disappointment. 
Some of them (Marvin and Spaulding) seem to have little further 
to say on the subject ; others (Perry and Montague) acknowl- 
edge that there is here a still unsolved problem (although the 
former depreciates its importance for the new realism) ; while 
those who address themselves most seriously to the task pro- 
duce an ambiguous and unsatisfactory result. 

Marvin is evidently not greatly interested in the problem. 
He contents himself with arguing that although secondary 
qualities are not so ubiquitous as primary qualities, they are 
not necessarily subjective on that account ,2 and that if second- 

1 Philosophical Review, XX, 1911, pp. 395-7. 

2 The New Realism, 1912, p. 35. 

3 An Introduction to Systematic Philosophy, 1903 ; see Journal of Philosophy, 
1, 1914, p. 133. 



NEO-REALISTIC DOCTRINE OF QUALITIES 249 

ary qualities were mental and not physical, the science of physics 
would almost have to be abandoned, as the major part of its 
subject-matter would be taken from it.^ With reference to 
this argument it only needs to be said that if ''subjective" and 
"mental" mean applying to the subject or mind, Marvin's 
latter statement is not strong enough; for if no objects were 
ever clothed with sense-qualities, no primary qualities could 
ever be discovered. On the other hand, if ''subjective" and 
"mental" mean no more than produced by the subject or mind, 
it may be held that secondary qualities are located by the sub- 
ject in the object, in which case physics would still be possible, 
and Marvin's argument would have no validity whatever. That 
the common-sense theory with reference to certain primary 
qualities of things is logically fundamental to physics we would 
hold to be true (Ernst Mach and others to the contrary notwith- 
standing). But it seems purely dogmatic to say the same 
thing with reference to secondary qualities, for reference to 
such qualities can all be eliminated from physical science ; and 
probably most modern physicists have, as a matter of fact, 
accepted the view that sense-qualities are dependent upon 
perception. 

With reference to the special difficulties of the neo-realistic 
dogma as to secondary qualities, Spaulding has had practically 
nothing to say. His treatment of hallucinations has been, if 
we remember correctly, confined to drawing from the actuality 
of such incorrect perceptions the inference that the content of 
the act of perception is never to be identified with the content 
of the object of perception.^ This rather obvious observation 
may be used, as Spaulding points out, to support the realistic 
view that objects exist independently of the perception of them. 
But in its chief significance it seems, one is almost inclined to 
think, to be an attempt to throw dust in the air, so as to obscure 
the weakness of the neo-realistic position at this point. The 
significant thing about hallucinations is that there is more in 
them than an act of perception ; there is an object, and the only 
notable difference between hallucination and correct percep- 
tion is a difference, not in the content of the act of perception 

^A First Book in Metaphysics, 1912, p. 193. 
2 Journal of Philosophy, III, 1906, pp. 314-5. 



250 THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE 

in the two cases, but in the content of the object. Indeed, as 
we have already noted more than once, the crux of the problem 
lies just in the fact that the content of the act of perception in 
the two cases is practically identical, while the content of the 
objects shows such a discrepancy, when adequately examined, 
that they cannot both be accounted parts of the independently 
existing world. Thus, when the dust is allowed to settle, we 
see that perceived but unreal object which is so ominous a por- 
tent for the neo-realist. 

R. B. Perry claims that color is itself neither physical nor 
psychical. In its relation to the source of light, it is physical ; 
in its relation to the retina, it is psychical.^ It becomes sub- 
jective when it is responded to selectively, so that it enters into 
a mental complex.^ Whether this mental complex of which 
color is a term is dependent upon consciousness or not, color 
itself is independent of consciousness.^ 

In these statements Perry seems to be scarcely self-consist- 
ent. If it is color in its relation to the source of light, i.e. in 
the physical complex, that is independently real, i.e. real inde- 
pendently of any relation to the retina, how can it be said 
that color itself is neither physical nor psychical? Ought not 
the neo-realist to say that color is always physical and some- 
times psychical (related to sensitive organism, conscious sub- 
ject, or what not) ? On this whole matter of secondary quali- 
ties in relation to perception and especially on the problem of 
hallucination and illusion. Perry's utterances show that, unlike 
most of his collaborating friends, he has strangely failed to ap- 
preciate how fundamental this question is in relation to what 
he is concerned to defend. He claims that these problems 
of perception are not any clearer on a pan-idealistic basis 
than on a pan-objectivistic basis, and that the problem of 
perception has nothing to do with the comparative merits of 
reahsm and idealism.* On the contrary we hold, and we will 
try to show, that these problems of perception are crucial for 
the question of idealism and realism. They are the rock upon 
which the bark of neo-realism is bound to split. No realism 
can be finally satisfactory until it has found a favorable adjust- 

1 Present Philosophical Tendencies, p. 310. 2 /^.^ p. 324. 

3 The New Realism, p. 128. " Journal of Philosophy, X, 1913, pp. 461-2. 



NEO-REALISTIC DOCTRINE OF QUALITIES 251 

ment to these stubborn facts of varying sense-qualities, illu- 
sions, and kindred contents of perception. 

W. B. Pitkin agrees with Holt and Montague that the prob- 
lem of error in all its forms is a crucial one for the new realism, 
as for every other theory of cognition.^ He himself follows 
Alexander and Nunn in the extreme view that the contents of 
hallucinatory and illusory experience are quite independent of 
cognition. 2 They are simply very intricate instances of objects 
in complex physical relations.^ This is courageous and con- 
sistent, and the only way but one ^ by which the realist can keep 
the fact of error and hallucination from driving him into dualism. 
But it may well be questioned whether dualism itself, with its 
agnostic implications, is not to be chosen in preference to this 
pan-objectivism ; whether the neo-realist's boldness is not sus- 
piciously like bravado, and whether the position he has taken 
is not in reality the reductio ad ahsurdum of his philosophy. 
Assuming that everything which functions as object of aware- 
ness, error included, must exist independently of the awareness, 
the consistent neo-realist is led to the virtual denial that there 
ever is or can be any perceptual or other form of error. Accord- 
ing to the new realism, therefore, idealism and dualism both 
are, and yet cannot be, erroneous. In other words, the new 
realism is a self -refuting system. 

E. B. Holt has been strongly influenced bj^ the radical em- 
piricism of William James, ^ and the empiriocriticism of Avena- 
rius.® He has undertaken to give a distinctly and unequivo- 
cally realistic turn to this philosophy of pure experience, so 
that he may be regarded as representing the movement from a 
disguised pan-subjectivism, or pan-psychical view, to a dis- 
guised pan-objectivism, or pan-physical view. He holds that 
the world is not made up of hidden stuff, called '^ matter"; ^ 
but out of neutral stuff, which is neither mental nor physical, 
neither subjective nor objective, but which may become either. 
It includes whatever one happens to meet with, and includes 
it just as it is in ''pure" experience.^ Everything that is, is 

1 The New Realism, p. 458. 2 76., p. 461. 

3 76., pp. 463, 467. * See Ch. XIV, infra. 

5 The Concept of Consciousness, 1914, Pref., p. xiii, etc. 

6 76., pp. 2, 77, etc. 7 /^.^ pp. 122-3. » 76., p. 122 and Ch. VIII. 



252 THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE 

and is as it is.^ The mental arises when the nervous system 
selectively describes, in the neutral realm of being, a content to 
which it responds. It is thus a part of the neutral stuff of pure 
experience, in a special relation to a bodil}^ function.^ 

There is no very sharply defined theory of reality, however. 
The remark is passed that it is something within all that is,^ 
and from the discussion as a whole ^ one gathers that neutral 
being — which is defined as constituted of purely logical or 
conceptual entities, " propositions," the timelessly subsistent 
content of all actual and conceivably possible thinking — is re- 
garded as including the real (experienceable) and the unreal, 
or merely logical, and that the real, in turn, is supposed to 
include — or better, in different contexts, to he, respectively — the 
physical and the psychical. But it is only the unreal, not the 
real, that Holt explicitly and clearly defines as a species of being ; 
and it is only the mental, not the physical, that he explicitly and 
clearly defines as a species of the real. In view' of this failure to 
give us a clear and unequivocal theory of reality, and of the re- 
jection also of the ordinary notion of matter, together with the 
assertion that things with all their primary and secondary 
qualities exist prior to the rise of the psychical,^ the practical 
upshot is that the '^neutral stuff," or being, tends to coincide 
with the real, and the real with the physical, the mental being 
simply, one might almost say, being (or the real, or even the 
physical), in a special sort of relation. The same interpretation 
is suggested in the remark that "perhaps reality is some very 
comprehensive system of terms in relation";^ and the same 
virtual identification of being with reality and the physical 
also comes out, although more strikingly, in the attempt made 
to explain all sense-qualities — not only without adequate 
empirical corroboration, but even in defiance of one of our most 
elementary and indisputable discriminations — as complex 
products whose ultimate constituents are nervous shocks."^ 

1 The New Realism, p. 359. 

2 The Concept of Consciousness, Ch. IX and pp. 213, 338. 

3 lb., pp. 33, 338-9. * lb., passim; The New Realism, pp. 303-73. 

5 The Concept of Consciousness, pp. 134, 140, 153. 

6 The New Realism, p. 366. 

' 76., pp. 313-30, 351-4 ; The Concept of Consciousness, p. 213. The ten- 
dency to identify the "neutral" with the physical is more marked in Holt's 



NEO-REALISTIC DOCTRINE OF QUALITIES 253 

But in view of the fundamental theorj^ that all contents of 
consciousness, and more, exist prior to conscious experience, 
in the world of neutral stuff, the problem of the place of illusory 
experience in a realistic world is so obvious a difficulty that 
Holt is forced to take it up seriously, and his treatment of this 
subject is by no means lacking in boldness. The logical con- 
clusion from his premises — a conclusion which most would 
regard as the reductio ad ahsurdum of his position — he boldly 
takes up as a part of his theory, defending the view that all 
errors, contradictions, and untruths exist in the neutral realm 
of being, and so, in the objective world, independently of their 
existence in the mind.^ In order to render this necessary con- 
clusion plausible, a number of considerations are advanced. 
It is admitted that there can be no contradiction between mere 
terms, or physical objects, but onty between propositions.^ 
There must exist, then, in the neutral realm, all propositions, 
contradictory or not, which can possibly enter into conscious- 
ness. Here, especially. Holt finds use for Royce's doctrine of the 
conceptual nature of the universe, although, of course, he inter- 
prets it in a realistic rather than an idealistic sense. ^ All cases 
of collision, interference, combining and separating, disease 
and death, are interpreted as cases in which there is a logical 
contradiction to some principle of motion.^ Error, then, de- 
fined as the being together in knowledge of contradictory prop- 
ositions,^ is, it would seem, just what ought to be expected, 
when reality contains so many contradictions; indeed, error 
turns out to be a necessary element in valid knowledge ! Is 
this a consequence of 'Hhe renaissance of logic" w^hich the 
author hails with such enthusiasm ? ^ 

In Holt's discussion of illusory experience some appearance 

essay in The New Realism than in The Concept of Consciousness ; a significant 
fact when it is remembered that the former, while published before the latter, 
was not written until some years after the other had been completed. Signs of 
still further progress in the materialist direction are to be found in the paper, 
"Response and Cognition," in which it is admitted that "the several present- 
day tendencies to resolve the subjective category of soul-substance into objective 
relations, all take their origin in the contentions of the eighteenth-century 
materialists" {Journal of Philosophy, XII, 1915, p. 407). 

^ The Concept of Consciousness, p. 269 ; The New Realism, pp. 303 ff. 

2 The Concept of Consciousness, pp. 263-4. ' lb., Pref., p. xiii. 

* lb., p. 277. 5 lb., p. 270. 6 lb., Ch. I. 



254 THE PROBLEM OP KNOWLEDGE 

of relief from his difficulties is gained by the introduction of 
certain characteristic devices. Hallucination, it is suggested, 
takes place when the nervous system generates within itself 
nerve-currents of frequency similar to those set up from with- 
out,^ so that the appearance of the sense-quality is explained 
when it is remembered that all sense-qualities are just various 
combinations of nervous shocks ! The objects of hallucination, 
however, we are informed, are not in ''real space,'' but in a space 
like mirror-space, and equally objective.^ Thus they need not 
be regarded as unreal ; ^ although the reason for this is not so 
clear as we could wish, especially when we read not only that 
there are objects which are unreal,^ but that even some per- 
ceived things are unreal.^ 

Thus Holt's special brand of the new realism seems, we may 
perhaps be pardoned for observing, one of the most amazing 
displays of wilful philosophizing that has been witnessed in 
recent years. If it were presented somewhat as non-Euclidean 
geometries are presented, as the working out of the impHca- 
tions of a false or at least doubtful assumption (in this case, 
Holt's definition of consciousness), it would be less objection- 
able; but as it is, the only excuse would seem to be that the 
author could not think of any self-consistent position between 
a completely dualistic representationalism and the most thor- 
oughgoing denial that there is any such thing as representa- 
tional knowledge. If he had been able to think of any other 
way of avoiding the idea that secondary qualities are ''sensed 
within our skulls," ^ or any way of seeing how they could be 
"on the objects" without existing prior to and independently 
of consciousness of them, he would have ceased to wonder, 
perhaps, at the "impertinence"^ and " effrontery " ^ of physi- 
cal scientists in speaking of the movement of masses in time 
and space as more independently real than colors, sounds, 
tastes, and odors, and would probably have spared himself 
the unavailing labor he has so abundantly bestowed upon an 
impossible task. 

W. P. Montague, although accepting the new realism at his 

1 The New Realism, pp. 352-3. 2 75.^ pp. 354^ 368. 

8 76., p. 367. 4 75. 5 75.^ p. 353. 

6 The Concept of Consciousness, p. 137. ^ 76., p. 133. » lb., p. 138. 



NEO-REALISTIC DOCTRINE OF QUALITIES 255 

own definition of realism as ''the doctrine that the same ob- 
jects known by some one may continue to exist when not known 
by any one," ^ is not to be regarded as a quite typical neo- 
realist. When it comes to the matter of secondary qualities espe- 
cially he falters where the others firmly tread. But his view is 
none the less interesting and important on that account, and his 
reasons for deviating so far from his associates are not a little 
instructive. In a critical article, published in 1904, on the 
epistemological views of H. B. Alexander and C. A. Strong, he 
agrees with the former that the perceived object is externally 
real, and with the latter that it is within the psychophysical 
organism.^ He refuses to accept what he calls naive realism, 
or the ''telepathic view" of Alexander, because of the diffi- 
culties connected with the transcendence of space and time 
which would be involved, he claims, in the direct perception 
of such objects as the fixed stars, and for the additional reason 
that since the object perceived is the same in the true and in 
the illusive perception, and yet the extra-organic circumstance is 
different, it follows that the object directly perceived cannot be 
the object external to the organism, but only the projection or 
"shadow" which it casts upon the organism (in the brain) .^ 
Later he criticises the new realism as being too nearly identical 
with naive or natural realism. It must be amended, he claims, 
so as to make it compatible with the universal phenomenon of 
error, and with the mechanism of perception.^ The dogmatism 
of monistic realism in tending to identify seeming with being 
must be corrected in the light of such phenomena as dreams, 
spatial and temporal aberration, etc.^ The realist must learn 
to apply more widely the principle which he already em- 
ploys in interpreting pleasures as having no independent ex- 
istence.^ 

But while admitting that the perceived and the real may not 
be numerically identical, Montague cherishes the conviction 
that qualitatively they are similar,^ and possibly identical, even 
if not necessarily so.^ It is an unwarranted claim, that the 

1 Journal of Philosophy, VI, 1909, p. 460. 2 lb., I, 1904, p. 300. 

3 lb., p. 296 ; cf. IV, 1907, p. 383. ■* lb., IX, 1912, p. 46. 

5/6., IV, 1907, p. 378; IX, 1912, pp. 39-41. 

6 lb., VI, 1909, p. 461. 7 75.^ IV, 1907, p. 378. 

8 lb., IV, 1907, p. 382 ; Philosophical Review, XXIH, 1914, p. 62. 



256 THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE 

independent objectivity of secondary qualities is unimagina- 
ble.^ The interpretation of these qualities as purely sub- 
jective is a dogma inadequately based upon the two facts that 
secondary qualities have no value for predictive or mechanical 
science, and that they are more closely associated than pri- 
mary qualities with the feelings, which are admittedly subjec- 
tive.2 On the scientifically respectable assumption that the 
extra-organic causes of central states are most probably the 
events which would have most simply caused the states, it 
may be supposed that the sense-qualities of the perceived pro- 
jection in the brain are also present in the extra-organic object, 
its cause. This speculation is not at present fully verified, 
so that the problem of the external reality of secondary 
qualities cannot be said as yet to be solved; but it is not 
inconceivable that if our knowledge of the primary energies 
in bodies and in cerebral tracts were more exact, we might 
have their discovered identity as a further basis for the in- 
ference. In any case, the possibility of error would be ex- 
plained by the facts that the simplest cause is not always 
the actual cause, and that an effect may be counteracted by 
some other cause.^ 

This view Montague has expounded, in his various articles, 
in considerable detail. The qualities of the perceived object 
(which is really in the brain, though virtually in extra-organic 
space) ^ he regards as being dependent upon the relation of the 
extra-organic object to the brain. ^ This, of course, is meant 
to apply to normal perception only, as hallucinatory experi- 
ences must depend upon something else, since the supposed 
external object is not real. On the basis of continued experi- 
ence we divide the qualities of the perceived object into those 
which are compossible, and which may therefore be thought 
of as belonging to the thing-in-itself, and on the other hand 
those which are not compossible with such as have been selected 
as valid, and so must be regarded as qualities which the per- 
ceived (really cerebral, but virtually extra-organic, because 

1 Journal of Philosophy, I, 1904, p. 298. « 76., p. 299. 

8 The New Realism, pp. 286-7, 299 ; Journal of Philosophy, IV, 1907, p. 378 ; 
Philosophical Review, XXIII, 1914, p. 64. 
4 Philosophical Review, XXIII, 1914, p. 62. 
f> Journal of Philosophy, II, 1905, p. 315. 



NEO-REALISTIC DOCTRINE OF QUALITIES 257 

virtually projected) object has because of the influence upon 
the brain of something other than the real extra-organic object. 
In other words, these latter qualities are to be regarded as 
mere appearances, which lose whatever reality they had with 
the vanishing of the perception. ^ The meaning here seems 
clearly to be that the only objects of perception are the ''simu- 
lacra of extra-cerebral objects" contained by the brain,^ but 
perceived as virtually extra- organic, or projected, i.e. perceived 
as if they were where they are not. This seems to be a posi- 
tion very closely approximating epistemological dualism, and 
logically involving agnosticism with reference to all beyond 
projected cerebral simulacra. If the simulacra were such as 
could be actually projected, it would seem too much to say 
that we have any experience of the physical, even of the cere- 
bral simulacra themselves; moreover, since ''we could not 
infer the physical unless we experienced the physical," ^ the 
result would be absolute dualism and complete agnosticism 
with reference to physical reality (and therefore, according to 
Montague's own view, agnosticism with reference to all reality) . 
But what Montague means is that the simulacra are physical, 
and that the act of projection is "not an actual act," but "a 
virtual act" ; "the world we perceive is (not indeed an actual 
but) a virtual or potential reprojection of the effects which the 
world projects upon us." ^ In this case, since the cerebral 
simulacrum is not actually projected, we may perhaps be 
allowed to say that we perceive a part of the physical, viz. 
a part of the cerebral ; but even so, remembering that there is 
no actual projection, we would be, to use Montague's own 
language, "reduced to the wretched status of an intra-cranial 
solipsist." For — let his words be repeated — "if we cannot 
get beyond our own brains in immediate perception, we cannot 
get be3^ond them at all." ^ According to his own statement, 
this physiological solipsism can be avoided only by accepting 
his special theory of consciousness,^ and to an examination of 
that theory we must turn in a later connection; but unless 

1 lb., IV, 1907, p. 383 ; V, 1908, pp. 211-12. 

2 Philosophical Review, XXIII, 1914, p. 61. 

3 Journal of Philosophy, I, 1904, p. 294. 

* Philosophical Review, XXIII, 1914, p. 62. 
6/6., p. 61. «/6. 

S 



258 THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE 

he should make good his case at this second trial, we must 
regretfully see him remanded to his narrow ^'intra-cranial" 
prison, from which his only possible escape must be merely 
verbal, that is, to use his own term, virtual, and not actual. 
In such a case liis monistic or '^new'' realism, one might also 
say, would be merely virtual, and not actual. 



CHAPTER XII 

The Neo-Realistic Doctrine of Consciousness 

The intimate relation between the neo-realistic doctrine of 
secondary qualities and the views held by the new realists as 
to the nature of consciousness is well indicated in the words of 
Montague: ''As long as the secondary qualities are accepted 
as objectively [i.e. what we would call independently] real, 
there is no temptation to regard consciousness as anything but 
a relation." ^ In dealing with the theories of consciousness 
which are current in the English and American neo-realistic 
schools, it may be well to note that although the doctrine of 
the independent reality of secondary qualities may often be 
found ostensibly resting upon the view that consciousness is 
an "external" relation, the actual dependence is probably in 
the main in the opposite direction. 

We shall turn our attention first to the English school. 
Here it seems easy to detect the influence of the distinctions 
made by Shadworth Hodgson in his first presidential address 
as first president of the Aristotelian Society in 1887. In answer- 
ing negatively the question, ''Is mind synonymous with con- 
sciousness?" he indorsed (although from the standpoint of 
the philosophy of pure experience, i.e. disguised psychological 
idealism, rather than from that of natural realism) the distinc- 
tions involved in the common-sense assumption that conscious- 
ness is some one's consciousness of something. Res cogitanSj 
cogitatio, and cogitata must, he insisted, be carefully and con- 
stantly distinguished. As against the confusing idealistic 
identification of knowing with knower, he maintained that 
mind is a subject of attributes, and consciousness an attribute 
of that subject, a knowing and not a knower.^ In later ad- 
dresses he characterizes mind as that which we perceive as the 

1 Journal of Philosophy, II, 1905, p. 315. 

2 Proc. Aristot. Soc, 1887-8, pp. 6, 7, 23. 

259 



260 THE PROBLEM. OF KNOWLEDGE 

subject of consciousness, and matter as that which we perceive 
as the object of consciousness.^ This suggested total identi- 
fication of matter with the object of consciousness, and of the 
object of consciousness with matter, reveals on the one hand 
the lack of a bona fide reaHsm in Hodgson's own philosophy. 
(He indorses the view that not only does all consciousness 
reveal Being, but that all Being is revealed in consciousness. 2) 
But on the other hand the identification referred to seems to 
explain the direction taken by the later studies of the Enghsh 
new realists, in which the problem is as to what consciousness 
can be, if the object of consciousness is always in its entirety 
independently real. 

What seems to us the most defensible feature of Hodgson's 
doctrine of consciousness, viz. the distinction between con- 
sciousness and its subject (mind) on the one hand, and its 
object on the other, reappears in realistic form in the writings 
of L. T. Hobhouse and W. McDougall. The former speaks 
of perception as an act of consciousness referring to the object 
perceived, so that, as such, it is the mind's own creation. The 
perception, or assertion, as mental event, is to be distinguished, 
according to Hobhouse, from the content, as fact perceived or 
asserted.^ McDougall, in his work entitled Body and Mind: 
A History and Defense of Animism,'^ describes ''the soul" in a 
way that seems most obviously to imply an essentially identical 
view of consciousness. A soul, he says, is "a being that pos- 
sesses, or is, the sum of definite capacities for psychical activity 
and psycho-physical interaction, of which the most funda- 
mental are (1) the capacity of producing, in response to certain 
physical stimuli (the sensory processes of the brain) the whole 
range of sensation quahties in their whole range of intensities ; (2) 
the capacity of responding to certain sensation-complexes with 
the production of meanings ; . . . (3) the capacity of respond- 
ing to these sensations and these meanings with feeling and 
conation or effort, under the spur of which fxu-ther meanings 
may be brought to consciousness in accordance with the laws 
of reproduction of similars and of reasoning ; (4) the capacity of 
reacting upon the brain-processes to modify their course in a 

1 Proc. Aristot. Soc, 1891-2, p. 4. 2 j&., p. 52. 

8 The Theory of Knowledge, 1896, pp. 531-4. * 1911. 



NEO-REALISTIC DOCTRINE OF CONSCIOUSNESS 261 

way which we cannot clearly define, but which we may pro- 
visionally conceive as a process of guidance by which streams 
of nervous energy may be concentrated in a way that antago- 
nizes the tendency of all physical energy to dissipation and deg- 
radation." ^ But neither Hobhouse nor McDougall develops 
much further the implications of this general position ; indeed, 
the latter seems in a later work ^ to be tending in the direction 
of the more typically neo-realistic doctrine of the behaviorist 
psychologists. '^ Consciousness," he says, ''is an activity of 
some being which, in all cases of which we have positive knowl- 
edge, is a material organism, but to which we may conven- 
iently give the general name, subject." ^ To an examination of 
this later view we shall therefore have to return in another 
connection. 

The typical English neo-realistic view of consciousness is 
best found in the writings of G. E. Moore, B. Russell, S. 
Alexander, and T. P. Nunn. Moore's first utterances on the 
subject show him already beginning to develop Hodgson's 
doctrine in the realistic direction. Experience, as a kind of cog- 
nition, stands, he claims, for a double fact, viz. a mental state, 
and that of which this mental state is cognizant.^ He evi- 
dently holds, however, that it would be absurd to suppose 
that the mind could give properties to things.^ The problem 
then comes to be what consciousness is, if it does nothing to 
its object. Sensation, it is averred, is "a case of knowing, or 
being aware of, or experiencing something." ^ To be aware of 
the sensation is not to be aware of its content, but to be aware 
of the awareness of a sense-content.'^ But, it is confessed, 
*'when we try to introspect the sensation of blue, all we can see 
is the blue ; the other element is as if it were diaphanous." ^ 
But since it is insisted that the observation of a perception of 
red is altogether different from the perception of red,^ the 
problem becomes acute as to just what consciousness, which 
has been supposed to be the special "subject-matter of psychol- 
ogy," really is. Moore seems to remain in doubt as to whether 

1 Body and Mind, p. 365. 2 Psychology : The Study of Behavior, 1912. 

3 Op. cit, p. 60. 4 Proc. Aristot. Soc, 1902-3, p. 82. 

8 lb., 1903^, p. 135. 6 Mind, N.S., XII, 1903, p. 449. 

7 76. 8 ib.^ p. 450. 9 Proc. Aristot. Soc, 1905-6, p. 104. 



262 THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE 

the mind itself, as the subject of mental acts, or any objective 
contents of mental activities, even sense-data, should be in- 
cluded in the subject-matter of psychology.^ He would include 
without hesitation, however, as undoubtedly mental or psychical 
entities, all mental acts, all qualities distinguishing mental acts 
from each other, and all collections of mental acts.^ As criteria 
of the mental the following are offered : it must be an act of con- 
sciousness ; it must belong to some person, or mind ; and, finally, 
it must, perhaps, be directly known to one person only.^ 

There is much that is suggestive in this view of Moore's, 
and not a little that will be retained in the view to be defended 
in a later chapter; but it must be evident that, although 
consciousness may very well be mental or psychical activity, 
it is difficult to conceive how any activity can either be ''diaph- 
anous" or exist without producing any change in any of the 
quahties of the object toward which it is directed. Little 
wonder, then, that at least a tendency should be manifested, 
to include within the subject-matter of psychology, although 
inconsistently, more than this neutral sort of entity to which 
consciousness has been reduced. 

Russell has thus far had comparatively Httle to say about 
consciousness, but he accepts the general realistic doctrines 
that knowing is a relation which is external to its object,^ and 
that only the mental act, and not the thing apprehended, is 
conscious.^ Similarly, Nunn subscribes to the view. that in 
perception there is no psychical intermediary "on the object 
side" between the subject and the independently real thing.^ 

More elaborate attention to the nature of consciousness is 
found in Alexander's articles ; but whether he has succeeded 
thereby in throwing further light upon the problem may well 
be doubted. He adopts the view that consciousness is mental 
activity, conation, which differs in different cases only in its 
direction toward different objects of perception or thought.^ 

1 Proc. Aristot. Soc, 1909-10, pp. 51-7. 2 lb., pp. 36-51. 

3 lb. * Journal of Philosophy, VIII, 1911, pp. 159-60. 

5 Problems of Philosophy, p. 65. Acquaintance, according to Russell, is a dual 
relation between a subject and an object, which need not have any community of 
nature. The subject is " mental," while the object is not known to be mental, 
except in introspection (Monist, XXIV, 1914, p. 1 ; cf. pp. 4 and 435-53). ' 

^Proc. Aristot. Soc, 1909-10, p. 202. ^ lb., 1907-8, pp. 216, 219-22. 



NEO-REALISTIC DOCTRINE OF CONSCIOUSNESS 263 

Later he acknowledges that this mental activity is accompanied 
by feeling, and this, like memory (the existence of the past),^ 
error and imagination, is, he confesses, an unsolved problem 
from his point of view.^ Still later it is admitted that con- 
sciousness, or knowing, not only is accompanied by feeling 
and varies in direction, but also that it varies in intensity and 
complexity.^ Still, we would remark, if this is all that con- 
sciousness is, it is difficult to understand how there can be in 
''acts of consciousness" enough subject-matter for the science 
of psychology, "^ and on the other hand how the object can be 
''saturated'' and even "vitiated'' by suggestions and infer- 
ences — "elements introduced into it by the mind." ^ 

But Alexander has other thoughts concerning the nature of 
consciousness. Mind consists of mental activity, which, he 
asserts, is located in the body ; it is a not purely physiological 
function of the body,^ a fortunate functional variation in the 
course of evolution, through which we are enabled to learn 
the characters of things.'^ But the identification of mind 
with body is carried still further. "We are directly aware," 
we read in a recent article, "that our mind and body are 
one thing, because we experience them in the same place." ^ 
Suitably to this conception of mind as a physical thing, there 
is the definition of consciousness, or knowing, or having experi- 
ence, as the mere " compresence," or togetherness, of two things, 
one of which is, and the other of which is not, a mind, i.e. a 
body with the empirical character of being conscious.^ This 

1 Later this is explained (?) by the dogma that memory "renews the past 
condition," ih., 1910-11, p. 21. 

2/6., 1907-8, pp. 251, 254; ih., 1908-9, p. 6. 

3 Ih., 1910-U, p. 18. " Ih., p. 7. 5 75., 1909-10, pp. 19, 28. 

«76., 1907-8, pp. 223-4; ih., 1909-10, p. 6. 

7 Mind, N.S., XXI, 1912, p. 17. 

^ Ih., p. 8; cf. Proc. Aristot. Soc, 1910-11, p. 17, A rather important 
sidelight upon Alexander's position here is found in the following sentence : 
"In my own case mental activity, especially in thinking ... is accompanied 
by marked movements of the eyes, which are apt to change their position with 
each change of the thought, and whose movements, in fact, I use as a means of 
directing thought in different directions and controlling it " {Proc. Aristot. 
Soc, 1907-8, p. 216). He tells us that in all his mental conditions he is aware 
of movements in different directions (ih., p. 219) ; and finally he speaks of this 
direction of the eyes as "mental direction," and the only thing to distinguish 
one thought-process from another (ih., p. 220). 

9 Mind, N.S., XXI, 1912, pp. 2, 318. 



264 THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE 

is manifestly a circular definition ; to define consciousness as the 
relation characteristic of a conscious body with another object 
is not to define it at all. A similar fault characterizes the state- 
ment, "knowledge of an external thing ... is the thing itself 
in the various ways in which it reveals itself to the mind." ^ 

G. F. Stout, a recent convert to English neo-realism, has 
furnished, apparently without fully realizing it, what may be 
regarded either as a reductio ad ahsurdum of the doctrine that 
consciousness is a purely external relation, so far as the object 
is concerned, or else as the antithesis to the thesis that con- 
sciousness is a relation, leading of necessity to the synthetic 
judgment that consciousness is a productive activity. In his 
paper entitled '' The Object of Thought and Real Being " ^ writ- 
ten under the spell of Meinong's " Gegenstandstheorie," he dis- 
cusses the implications of the innocent-looking proposition 
that "whenever we think of anything we think of its having a 
being which does not merely consist in its being thought of." ^ 
"It seems to involve an absurdity," he continues, "to suppose 
that what I think of has no being except the being thought of. 
For how can the being of anything be merely constituted by its 
being related to something else?" Indeed, "when I believe, 
or disbelieve, or suppose, that a centaur actually exists, I must 
think of its actually existing." ^ In no case is "the possible 
severance of what really is and what is thought " to be admitted.^ 
Generalities, alternative possibilities, and even non-being (de- 
fined as otherness), since they are objects of thought, are real 
independently of thought.® 

Now, in order to defend himself against the charge of having 
reduced his own realism to absurdity, Stout would probably fall 
back upon Meinong's and Russell's distinction between existence 
and " subsistence." But in the paper itself practically no use 
is made of this distinction. The discussion throughout is in 
terms of what " really is." Here Stout is like Montague, who 
says that all relations, including consciousness as a relation, 
presuppose that their terms exist ^'"^ and like M. R. Cohen, who 
regards the distinction between existence and subsistence as 

^Proc. Aristot. Soc, 1910-11, p. 19. ^ lb., 1910-11. 

3 lb., p. 187. *Ib. 6 lb., p. 188. 6 lb., pp. 192, 198-9. 

"f Journal of Philosophy, II, 1905, p. 313. 



NEO-REALISTIC DOCTRINE OF CONSCIOUSNESS 265 

"merely a temporary or provisional makeshift," for which he 
would substitute the idea of a non-mental and non-physical ex- 
istence} But, from our point of view,^ it is not necessary, ulti- 
mately, to interpret '^ subsistence " otherwise than in terms either 
of existence, physical or mental (i.e. as mind or as depending on 
mind), on the one hand, or of non-existence on the other. 
Nothing " really is," or has " real being," save what exists and as 
it exists, whether physically, or mentally, or in some other form 
of existence, if there be any other, — and we have no right to say 
there is any other, until it has been empirically discovered.^ 
Similarly ''generahties " exist, but only in particular things 
which exist, or as abstract ideas in existent minds. ''Alterna- 
tive possibilities " again, except in the case of what depends upon 
free, i.e. not completely predetermined, activity, is to be reduced 
either to existence or to non-existence, present, past, or future, 
by overcoming our ignorance. And even in the case of what 
depends upon not completely predetermined action, we need 
no other categories, ultimately, besides time, existence and non- 
existence ; only, until the action has taken place, no one can tell 
which category to employ in certain cases, whether that of 
(future) existence or that of (future) non-existence. 

From our point of view, then, the moral of Stout's train of 
reasoning ought to be clear. If consciousness is a mere external 
relation of one existent object to another, so that the object of 
consciousness is necessarily existent independently of con- 

1 /&., X, 1913, p. 199 ; XI, 1914, p. 626. 

2 Cf. pp. 84-8, 202-6, 231, supra, and pp. 302-6, infra. 

3 A. Wolf's remarks on the " explicit use of terms" in order to avoid confusion 
are very much to the point. " There is only one world of reality," he says, " and 
whatever is real is in it. What does not exist in the real world does not exist at 
aU. A material object cannot exist as a mental process, nor can a mental pro- 
cess be a material object. To say that a centaur exists in intellectu is simply to 
use the word centaur elliptically instead of * the idea of a centaur.' Similarly 
to assert the existence of a centaur ' in the world of mythology,' is to use the 
word centaur instead of 'an account of a centaur.' . . . Existing ideas of a 
thing, or existing accounts of a thing, all these are as such real enough ; but 
their reality is a very different thing from the reality of the thing itself. If the 
thing itself is not real, then no real ideas of it, no real descriptions of it can as 
such make it real. But in that case to speak of it as having logical existence, or 
empirical existence in some other than the real world, is simply a mysterious way 
of asserting the reality not of the thing in question, but of something quite dif- 
ferent "(r/ie Existential Import of Categorical Predication: Studies in Logic, 
1905, p. 48; cf. p. 160). 



266 THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE 

sciousness, then we cannot think of anything which does not 
exist independently of our thinking of it. But this is absurd ; 
wherefore consciousness cannot be a mere external relation, 
so far as the object is concerned ; it must be to some extent a 
productive activity, so that it can be a relation to that which 
depends upon itself (consciousness) for its existence. But, in 
any case, from any point of view. Stout's doctrine is involved 
in unavoidable final self-contradiction. Non-being, defined as 
other than all that is real, would have to be regarded by him as 
real. Here we have again the paradoxical " impossible objects," 
with regard to which Meinong and Russell are unable to come 
to agreement. 

The idea of a productive or creative psychical activity, to 
which Stout ought to have been led by the dialectic of his thought, 
had already been given a partial, but insufficient, applica- 
tion by A. Wolf. In criticism of Alexander's doctrine that 
the self is made up of transparent acts of consciousness, 
conation without qualitative differences, he urges that this 
view is applicable only in the case of normal perception. With 
regard to imagination, memory, and abnormal perception, it is 
suggested that the representative theory be applied ; here con- 
sciousness is a content-process, i.e. an activity in which both 
process and content are mental, an activity that has in it 
something of the nature of production, creation, and, at the 
very least, distortion.^ This is moving in the right direction, 
but it affords no point of stable equilibrium. The conscious 
processes in normal perception and in hallucination are, as 
processes (apart from their antecedents on the one hand and 
their independent objects on the other, neither of which are 
parts of the processes in question), essentially identical in kind. 
If there is creativeness in the one, there is creativeness in the 
other ; if there is none in the one, there is none in the other. 

The point of transition from the English neo-realistic doc- 
trine of consciousness to the more extreme view characteristic 
of the American School is nowhere better expressed than by 
WilHam James in his almost epoch-making essay, " Does 
Consciousness Exist ? " ''I beUeve," he says, referring to 
G. E. Moore's doctrine of consciousness as a diaphanous activ- 

1 Proc. Aristot. Soc, 1908-9, pp. 164-5, 169-71. 



NEO-REALISTIC DOCTRINE OF CONSCIOUSNESS 267 

ity, '' that ' consciousness/ when once it has evaporated to this 
estate of pure diaphaneity, is on the point of disappearing 
altogether. It is the name of a nonentity, and has no right 
to a place among first principles. Those who still cling to it 
are clinging to a mere echo, the faint rumor left behind by the 
disappearing 'soul' upon the air of philosophy." ^ As a radi- 
cal empiricist he holds that "knowing can easily be explained 
as a particular sort of relation towards one another into which 
portions of pure experience may enter. The relation itself is 
a part of pure experience ; one of its ' terms ' becomes the sub- 
ject or bearer of the knowledge, the knower, the other becomes 
the object known." 2 Thus while consciousness is not an en- 
tity, it is a function discharged by certain elements of pure 
experience with reference to others,^ and is therefore to be 
regarded as a relation between these two elements of experi- 
ence, purely external so far as the objective or represented ex- 
perience is concerned. "^ Now James is right enough, we may 
concede, in maintaining that this is what consciousness would 
be in a world of pure experience; but it is another question 
whether the formula will still hold when the world of pure 
experience is translated into a realistic world, existing inde- 
pendently of its being known or experienced. This, however, 
is what the American neo-realists have tried to maintain. 

W. T. Bush, who, as we have seen, occupies a somewhat 
transitional point of view, indorses James's "dropping of con- 
sciousness as a metaphysical concept." ^ His own solution of 
the problem of consciousness is that consciousness is that 
content of pure experience which is the essentially private and 
unsharable experience of one person.^ But this is a plausible 
suggestion only until one begins to divide up the contents of 
pure experience into the conscious and the non-conscious. 
Pleasure and pain and all organic feelings, including kin- 
aesthetic sensations, would presumably be within conscious- 
ness, while colors and sounds would be in the non-conscious 
realm ; but what about the taste of a particular morsel on the 

1 Journal of Philosophy, 1, 1904, p. 477 ; Essays in Radical Empiricism, p. 2. 

2 Essays in Radical Empiricism, p. 4. 3 /5_^ p, 3^ 4 j^^ pp_ 23, 25. 

5 Avenarius and the Standpoint of Pure Experience, p. 75 ; cf . Essays . . . in 
Honor of William James, 1908, p. 102 ; Journal of Philosophy, X, 1913, p. 534. 
^ Avenarius and the Standpoint of Pure Experience, pp. 75, 77. 



268 THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE 

tongue of some individual? Is that not unsharable? But is 
it permissible to draw any rigid line through sense-contents, 
marking off the objective from the subjective? If there were 
but one color-blind person, his visual experience would be un- 
sharable. Would it on that account be a conscious experi- 
ence ? And then if a second color-blind person should come into 
existence, would the visual experience of the first one suddenly 
cease to be conscious ? The only basis upon which the validity 
of such an accidentally shifting line of division could be justified 
would be the frank admission that there is no distinction of 
essential importance between the conscious and the unconscious. 
G. S. Fullerton, taking his writings as a whole, is also transi- 
tional between immediate empiricism and the new realism. 
In his System of Metaphysics he says, as the pure empiricist 
naturally would, that one's consciousness of the world and the 
world of which he is conscious, both exist, as symbol and thing 
symbohzed, within consciousness. The real external world, the 
thing symbolized, is a complex of conscious elements; and 
consciousness, the symbol, is a compound of sensational and 
imaginary elements, the latter largely predominating.^ The 
self is not a substantial substratum of conscious states, but a 
content of conscious experience.^ A few years later we find 
Fullerton defending the common-sense doctrine of the eject, 
arguing that while each of us knows directly his own thoughts 
and feelings, he is not conscious in the same way of the thoughts 
and feelings of others, and that it is by the bridge of an analogi- 
cal argument that he is conducted to them.^ This seems to 
be transitional between the disguised psychological idealism 
of the System of Metaphysics and the new realism of The World 
We Live In. Consciousness is being eliminated from the basis 
of aU reality, by being interpreted in terms of the eject. Sub- 
sequently we find that while the external world is still spoken 
of ambiguously as phenomenon, it is regarded as external to 
and independent of consciousness. Minds, it is maintained, 
are phenomena also,* although there seems to be no clear state- 
ment as to just what are the criteria of the mental status of 

1 System of Metaphysics, 1904, pp. 114-15. 2 75.^ p. 280. 

3 Journal of Philosophy, IV, 1907, pp. 506-7. 

* The World We Live In, 1912, pp. 85-6, 153, 156. 



NEO-REALISTIC DOCTRINE OF CONSCIOUSNESS 269 

any phenomenon, except that mental phenomena are *' ac- 
counted for by taking into consideration what happens to the 
body," while '4n the case of physical phenomena the relation 
to sense is ignored." ^ We can scarcely be said, therefore, to 
have a definition of consciousness from Fullerton ; but in so 
far as there are indications of one, it would seem to be that 
consciousness is either that part of the contents of the phenom- 
enal world which depends for its existence upon something 
which happens in the nervous system, or else that part whose 
dependence upon such events is not ignored, or else again, per 
impossihile, both ! Whether the line between the physical and 
the mental is fixed or shifting, or whether it is in some inscru- 
table way both, is not made to appear. And the reason prob- 
ably is that he who tries to be a realist without giving up im- 
mediate empiricism, is confronted, in the problem of the nature 
of consciousness, with one of several problems that admit of 
no solution from his point, or points, of view. 

Among American neo-realists probably no one has given 
more attention to the problem of consciousness than F. J. E. 
Woodbridge. What looks like a key to the history of his 
thinking on this subject is to be found in his essay, "Percep- 
tion and Epistemology." If the world is "made only of the 
stuff of consciousness, then," he writes, "consciousness is the 
kind of stuff that may be condensed into a lump of sugar with 
which to sweeten coffee." ^ This, of course, is expressive of 
Woodbridge's strong reaction against idealism; but it is a 
significant fact that in the end he himself defines consciousness 
in terms of the physical alone. He has persistently stood for 
the application of the method of the empirical sciences to the 
problems of consciousness and knowledge ;3 but his report of 
results is that when we introspect we never find anything but 
things in certain relations to each other.^ Knowing, or con- 
sciousness, then, since it is not discovered as a thing, although 
belonging with things in the physical order,^ is to be defined 
as a real relation between things.® It is a purely external rela- 

^ 76., p. 117. 2 Essays . . . in Honor of William James, pp. 160-1. 

3 76., pp. 140, 157, 166. * Journal of Philosophy, X, 1913, p. 608. 

6 76., II, 1905, pp. 119-20. 

6 Philosophical Review, XII, 1903, p. 374 ; Journal of Philosophy, II, 1905, 
p. 125. 



270 THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE 

tion, making no difference to its object ; ^ a relation of together- 
ness, at least. 2 In consciousness there is representation, but 
it is the representation of things by each other.^ But, defining 
more closely, this external relation, which consciousness or 
awareness is, is the relation of meaning, or implication, existing 
intermittently between the objects of experience.^ But has 
not the empirical investigator here allowed the object of in- 
vestigation, consciousness, to slip, as it were, through his 
fingers? Do we not constantly make the distinction between 
meaning and consciousness of meaning? Woodbridge's defini- 
tion of consciousness does not allow for this distinction, which 
is a perfectly valid and necessary one, especially from the realistic 
point of view. 

Woodbridge has suggested another definition of conscious- 
ness, from the point of view of external observation rather 
than from that of introspection. Before entering upon that, 
however, it will be convenient to mention here, rather than 
later, some recent psychological theories which have seemed in 
close accord with such realistic doctrines as that of Wood- 
bridge when he says that introspection reveals nothing but 
things. This doctrine suggests two consequences for psy- 
chology. The one is that images, or mental duplicates of 
things, are not to be looked for as necessarily and invariably 
conditioning conscious processes. The other is that intro- 
spection has been greatly overrated as a source of psychological 
information. The former view is represented by R. S. Wood- 
worth's article, ^'Imageless Thought"; ^ the latter, by Knight 
Dunlap's papers, ''The Case against Introspection,"^ and 
"Images and Ideas." ^ Woodworth asserts that ''meaning is 

1 Science, N.S., XX, 1904, p. 598 ; Journal of Philosophy, VII, 1910, p. 416 ; 
Philosophical Review, XXI, 1912, pp. 637, 639. 

'Journal of Philosophy, II, 1905, p. 120; " The Problem of Consciousness," 
in Studies in Philosophy and Psychology (Garman Commemoration Volume), 
1906, p. 155. 

3 Journal of Philosophy, II, 1905, pp. 121-2 : note the influence of William 
James here, with the characteristic difference due to the transition from pure 
empiricism to realism. 

* Garman Commemoration Volume, pp. 159, 160-2, 164 ; Psychological Review, 
XV, 1908, pp. 397-8 ; Journal of Philosophy, VI, 1909, p. 449. 

<* Journal of Philosophy, III, 1906, pp. 701-8. 

^ Psychological Review, XIX, 1912, pp. 4:0^-12. 

'' The Johns Hopkins University Circular, No. 3, March, 1914. 



NEO-REALISTIC DOCTRINE OF CONSCIOUSNESS 271 

not felt as the relation between an image and an object, but 
as the thought of the object. . . . The thought of the object is 
not the image, for the image may change while the same object 
is thought of." 1 He claims, moreover, that imageless thought 
is an apparent fact of introspection.^ E. L. Thorndike supports 
him in this : because ''we can will acts, images of whose resi- 
dent sensations are unobtainable, . . . pragmatically . . . the 
image is an irrelevant factor." ^ B^t while Wood worth claims 
that introspection shows that there can be thought without 
images, Dunlap declares that there is not the slightest evidence 
for the reality of introspection in the observation of conscious- 
ness. ''Knowing there certainly is; known, the knowing cer- 
tainly is not." What is supposed to be introspection, the 
observation of the process of observing, he insists is really only 
the observation of certain muscular, visceral, and other sensa- 
tions.^ In his later article he takes the ground that attention 
to the direct content of thought reveals not images, but only 
muscle-sensations.^ Understood as this consciousness of muscle- 
sensations, then, there is an important place in psychology for 
''introspection." ® 

We shall have to deal in a later connection with the place 
of imagery in thought, and with the possibility of introspection, 
but it may be remarked at once that this discounting of the 
reality and value of images and introspection has naturally been 
regarded as a minimizing of the distinctly psychical, a tendency 
to reduce it to the merely physical. Still, with regard to Dun- 
lap's report on introspection, much of what he says may be 
accepted readily enough : we shall ourselves contend that con- 
sciousness is an activity which is not apprehended in any case 
as a psychical (or psychically produced) element revealed by 
introspection, but only in a complex of muscular and other 
"sensations," and represented, or at least representable, by some 

1 Journal of Philosophy, III, 1906, p. 707. « lb., p. 702. 

3 lb., IV, 1907, pp. 40-2. 4 Psychological Review, XIX, 1912, pp. 410-12. 

6 Johns Hopkins University Circular, No. 3, 1914, pp. 35-6. Of. S. Alex- 
ander's report concerning his own sense of direction of the eyes (v. supra) and 
that of William James concerning breathing as the only content of thought or 
consciousness revealed through introspection, Journal of Philosophy, I, 1904, 
p. 491. 

^ Johns Hopkins University Circular, No. 3, 1914, p. 41. 



272 THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE 

idea, into which visual, auditory, verbal, or other imagery enters. 
And in opposition to the views of Woodworth and Thorndike 
on imagery and thought, J. R. Angell expresses the view that 
thought-processes are often carried on by verbal imagery so 
highly schematized, compressed, and automatized as to escape 
identification.^ Moreover, after examining the data upon which 
the existence of " imageless thought " is based, he denies that 
any real evidence has been produced for the initiation or con- 
trol of voluntary movement entirely without sensory or imaginal 
supervision.2 But, be that as it may, it is highly significant 
that Woodworth has now come out with a paper entitled, " A 
Revision of Imageless Thought," ^ in which, while the existence 
of imageless thought is reaffirmed, a different interpretation of 
the alleged phenomenon is offered, and one that runs counter 
to the prepossessions of the more typical American neo-realists 
and behaviorists. Woodworth calls his present view the 
" mental reaction theory," or " perceptual reaction theory," the 
basic idea of which is " that a percept is an inner reaction to 
sensation." Following sensation after an interval too short to 
be detected introspectively, there comes this mental or percep- 
tual reaction, adding new conscious content '^ which cannot be 
analyzed into elementary sensations," but which is the basis of 
the awareness of all that is afterwards recalled, including those 
" more remote relations and meanings," which, in the later ex- 
perience, " furnish the content of ' imageless thought.' " ^ 

But besides the method of introspection, psychology has 
long been using external observational methods, and we must 
notice in this connection the view of consciousness taken, and 
the estimate placed upon this phase of psychological investi- 
gation by some philosophers and psychologists who have 
adopted, explicitly or impUcitly, the neo-reahstic position. 
The reference here is to those philosophers {e.g. E. A. Singer 
and F. J. E. Woodbridge) and psychologists (e.g. E. L. Thorn- 
dike, J. B. Watson, and E. P. Frost) who identify, or tend to 
identify, consciousness, as subject-matter of psychology, with 
human and animal behavior. But other names may be men- 
tioned, of those who have contributed in important ways to 

1 Psychological Review, XVIII, 1911, pp. 312-13. 2 /?,., p. 320. 

3 Ih., XXII, 1915, pp. 1-27. ■» lb., pp. 22-27. 



NEO-REALISTIC DOCTRINE OF CONSCIOUSNESS 273 

the development of this point of view. One potent influence 
(especially in giving direction to the investigations and theories 
of J. B. Watson, one of the most extreme representatives of the 
behaviorist doctrines) has been the combined immediate em- 
piricism and instrumentalism of Dewey, together with the 
functional psychology represented by Angell, which also grew 
up under Dewey's influence. In some recent articles Dewey 
has expressed more explicitly than before (although the Cali- 
fornia address of 1899 should be remembered the views con- 
cerning consciousness which are implied in his logical doctrine. 
In his essay in the Columbia volume in honor of William James, 
he maintains that the action of what is called '' consciousness" 
consists in certain organic releases in the way of behavior.^ 
Later, in commenting upon this, he explains that he meant 
that ''consciousness" is an adjective of behavior, a quality 
attaching to it under certain conditions. Behavior may be 
instinctive, habitual, or conscious. Apart from behavior 
consciousness is a mere abstraction, just as redness is an ab- 
straction apart from some red object.^ J. R. Angell, in his 
paper on ''Behavior as a Category of Psychology,"'* while 
objecting pertinently, as we shall see, to the extreme doctrines 
which have recently been advanced in the name of behaviorism, 
acknowledges that he has been conducting his work as a psy- 
chologist from a point of view which would make entirely 
easy, and even seemingly worth while, the shift of emphasis 
involved in making psychology primarily the study of be- 
havior.^ 

E. L. Thorndike's views have had considerable influence in 
developing interest in the science of behavior. In his work 
on Animal Intelligence ® he advocates making the study of 
behavior, rather than introspection, the chief psychological 
method. Psychology, he urges, may be, at least in part, as 
independent of introspection as physics is.^ What he seems 
to advocate is the transforming of psychology into the study 
of "human and animal behavior, with or without conscious- 

1 V. Influence of Darwin, etc., pp. 242 ff., 270, note. 

2 Essays . . . in Honor of William James, p. 69, note. 

^Journal of Philosophy, IX, 1912, pp. 20, 21, 544-8; cf. XI, 1914, p. 65. 
* Psychological Review, XX, 1913, pp. 255-70. ^ 75.^ p. 268. 

6 New York, 1911 ; first edition, 1898. ^ Qp. cit., pp. 3, 5. 

T 



274 THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE 

ness." ^ It would then be essentially a supplement to phys- 
iology.2 

Thorndike's doctrine may seem extreme enough, but it is 
moderation itself as compared with the ideas advanced by 
J. B. Watson and E. P. Frost. Watson's investigations and 
theories began under the guiding direction of Dewey and 
Angell, but he has undoubtedly been deeply biassed, as he 
himself confesses, by an almost exclusive attention to animal 
psychology for some years.^ He regards the study of animal 
(including human) behavior as the only consistent functional 
psychology ^ and would discard from his procedure all intro- 
spection 5 and indeed all reference to consciousness, mental 
states, mind, content, imagery, and the like.® Consciousness, 
he claims, is no more an object of study in psychology than in 
physics.'^ He is optimistic enough to expect that the study 
of the relations of external stimulus and response will solve all 
the problems with which the introspective psychologist has 
concerned himself.^ Moreover, feeling that the admission 
that there are mental images weakens the claim of the be- 
haviorist,^ he proceeds to deny that there has been produced 
any objective experimental evidence of the existence of dif- 
ferent image-types. ^° Even in the case of ''implicit behavior," 
commonly called ''thought-processes," where explicit behavior 
is delayed, and where there is response only in the speech- 
mechanisms and in general bodily attitudes, the right or 
value of introspection is denied. Although, as he admits, 
no method of externally observing implicit behavior exists 
at present, such methods, he seems to expect, will yet be 
found. 1^ 

In protest against such extreme views Dewey enters a de- 
murrer. Behaviorism must take more than subcutaneous 
processes into account, he insists ; it must include the environ- 

1 Animal Intelligence, 1911, pp. 6, 7. ^ Ih., p. 16. 

3 See "Psychology as the Behaviorist Views It," Psychological Review, XX, 
1913, pp. 159, 175. 

4 lb., p. 166. 5 75., p. 158. 

^ lb., pp. 163, 166, 175-6; cf. Behavior: An Introduction to Comparative 
Psychology, 1914, p. 7. 

7 Psychological Review, XX, 1913, p. 176. s /&., p. 177, 

» Journal of Philosophy, X, 1913, p. 421. «> lb., p. 422. 

" 76., pp. 423-4, 428; Behavior, etc., 1914, pp. 16, 19, 21, 27. 



NEO-REALISTIC DOCTRINE OF CONSCIOUSNESS 275 

ment as well as the organism in its total object of study. ^ 
Angell's protest is more explicit and unambiguous. He finds 
it difficult to take literally the idea of the complete dismissal of 
the image from psychology. His own work, he contends, has 
shown, not, as Watson seems to think, the impossibihty of 
finding any definite imagery involved in the control of behavior, 
but the amazing versatility with which different kinds of 
imagery may be employed upon the same task.^ Moreover, 
he urges, the psychologist will never be able to dispense with 
introspection. The gap between a specific sensorial stimula- 
tion and a delayed response must be bridged with information 
gleaned from essentially introspective sources, or else left open.^ 
He advises the behaviorists to forego the excesses of youth, 
cautioning them against committing the '^ crowning absurdity" 
of seeming to deny any practical significance to that which is 
the chief distinction of human nature — ''the presence of 
something corresponding to the term mind — the one thing 
of which the fool may be as sure as the wise man." ^ 

It may be instructive, however, to refer to one more example 
of the extremes to which the behaviorist psychology has gone. 
E. P. Frost regards the idea of consciousness as simply a valu- 
able fiction ; ^ what we ought to mean by it is simply a pecul- 
iarly refined but purely physiological process.® It is a nervous 
path responding to the just previous and still partly persisting 
response of a nervous path to stimulation.'^ It differs from 
instinctive and habitual behavior in a way that has biological 
significance, for it modifies the machinery of behavior by vir- 
tue of energy stored up in the organism by past experience.^ 
But a nervous reaction can never be in response to itself as 
stimulus; in other words, introspection is impossible.^ There 
are no such things to be discovered as ''sensations," "images," or 
"feeUngs." ^^ The term "mind," when properly used, is simply 

^ See Journal of Philosophy, XI, 1914, p. 66. 
2/6., X, 1913, p. 609. 

3 Psychological Review, XX, 1913, pp. 262, 266, 269. < Ih., pp. 268, 270. 
5 76., XIX, 1912, p. 251. « Ih., p. 249. 

7 Journal of Philosophy, X, 1913, p. 717 ; XI, 1914, p. 107. 
^Psychological Review, XIX, 1912, p. 252; Journal of Philosophy, XI, 1914, 
p. 107. 

» Journal of Philosophy, X, 1913, p. 717. w lb., p. 716. 



276 THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE 

the total of such reactions to immediately preceding reactions.^ 
Thus, unless we mean by consciousness an ''unconscious aware- 
ness" of {i.e. a physiological reaction toward) an immediately 
previous ''unconscious awareness" (physiological reaction), there 
is no consciousness at all ; and inasmuch as this is itself a wholly 
unconscious process, there is no consciousness. The difficult 
problem as to what consciousness is, is solved by denying that it is. 
The critic might almost be pardoned, one would think, if 
he were to refuse to take such views seriously. When a mis- 
taken idea is consistently worked out to such an extravagant 
issue, it tends to be not only harmless, but a highly salutary 
warning; so that refutation by another becomes an act of 
supererogation, a sheer waste of energy. It does not call for 
refutation — it accomplishes that for itself — but it does call 
for explanation. It seems probable that this remarkable doc- 
trine is to be accounted for by the original confusion of con- 
sciousness with self-consciousness, and the interpretation of 
the discovery (?) that introspection is impossible to mean 
that there is no self-consciousness, and therefore no conscious- 
ness. Such views become important as signs of the times when 
it is remembered that they have received the imprimatur, at 
least, of the editors of two of our leading psychological and 
philosophical journals. And indeed it is not easy to see just 
where in principle the doctrine in question differs from that of 
some of our well-known contemporary American philosophers, 
e.g. E. A. Singer and F. J. E. Woodbridge. Singer claims that 
the hypothesis of other minds has no pragmatic meaning.^ 
Behef in consciousness, he says, is nothing more than expecta- 
tion of probable behavior. Consciousness is not something 
inferred from behavior; it is behavior.^ Both my mind and 
my fellow's mind are behavior.^ As to just what sort of be- 
havior mind or consciousness is, Singer at first professes igno- 
rance ; ^ but in a later article he advances the view that mind 
is the teleological behavior of an organism (which is also all 
the time absolutely mechanical).^ Woodbridge has expressed a 

* Journal of Philosophy, X, 1913, p. 719. 

2 "Mind as an Observable Object," Journal of Philosophy, VIII, 1911, p. 181. 

» lb., p. 183. " lb. 5 75., p. 184. 

« Journal of Philosophy, IX, 1912, pp. 213-14. 



NEO-REALISTIC DOCTRINE OF CONSCIOUSNESS 277 

similar view. Besides his view of consciousness as a relation 
of implication between objects, remembering that it is also an 
event in the world's history/ he has attempted to define it, as a 
purely natural event,^ in terms of behavior. He seems to 
identify consciousness with the ''adaptive and even prospec- 
tive adjustments" of the organism to its environment.^ 

The criticism directed by D. S. Miller against Singer will 
apply to all the extreme behaviorists. They do not recognize, 
or sufficiently regard, the ''unique togetherness" of things 
which exists in all cases of consciousness, or, in other words, 
the existence of separate "pools of conjoint phenomenality." ^ 
Moreover, they seem to have obstinately closed their eyes to 
the surely sufficiently obvious fact that no matter how intricate 
or special a physiological behavior-process may be, it is always 
an additional item of information about it, when one is told 
that it is accompanied hy consciousness. On the whole, then, 
Miller's rebuke of the neo-realists for dogmatism seems just; 
they "come to conclusions" and then brace themselves "to 
meet the problems whose solution alone could warrant any 
conclusion on the subject." ^ 

Before turning to the various conflicting views of conscious- 
ness advanced by the six "collaborating" neo-reahsts, we must 
notice the doctrines of McGilvary and Boodin. McGilvary 
begins promisingly by distinguishing between "subjective 
objects" of consciousness (e.g. pleasure), which exist only when 
there is awareness of them, and other objects of consciousness, 
which may be called "objective objects." ® There is a sensum 
and there is a sentire (awareness), he continues, and even 
though the sentire may be the effect of a physiological process, 
still the sensum may be the same as the sensihile which initiated 
the physiological process on which the sentire depends.'' Now 
it is just here, we would contend, that McGilvary fatally fails 
to make an absolutely essential distinction. To maintain 
that the sensum and the sensihile are numerically the same is 
doubtless essential to the vindication of a genuine acquaintance 

1 lb., VII, 1910, pp. 413-14. 2 lb., p. 415. 

» lb., VI, 1909, p. 454. Cf. X, 1910, pp. 602, 608. This idea has also been 
developed at length in a lecture not yet published. 
* Journal of Philosophy, VIII, 1911, pp. 323-4. 
' lb., p. 326. « 76., IV, 1907, p. 454. ^ /^.^ pp. 457^ 593. 



278 THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE 

with physical reahty in perception; but to assume that sen- 
sum and sensihile can be numerically one, only if they are in all 
respects qualitatively identical, is to ''fall into temptation and a 
snare"; it is this dogmatic ''short cut" which is "the root of 
all (the neo-realistic) evil," and McGilvary, having erred at 
this point, in company with many others, has "pierced himself 
through with many (epistemological) sorrows." It becomes 
immediately necessary to regard consciousness as "diapha- 
nous" ^ and, strictly speaking, undefinable; and that without 
the idealistic excuse, that it is the summum genus of all reality. 
It is asserted, to be sure, that consciousness of a thing is a 
"relation between objects," "a unique togetherness of the 
thing with other things." ^ But, while it may be admitted — 
and the thing admitted is an important truth — that in the 
event of consciousness there is a unique togetherness of things, 
it is still doubtful at least whether it is that unique together- 
ness which is the consciousness, or whether it is not merely 
a necessary consequence of consciousness. And then, that 
blessed word "unique" is here simply a device by means of 
which one is enabled to give a formal definition where the pos- 
sibility of a real definition has been cut off. To say that con- 
sciousness is a unique togetherness is at best to define by means 
of the proximate genus, leaving the differentia of the species 
blank, offering as excuse at the same time the more than doubt- 
ful assertion that no intelligible differentia exists. McGilvary 
does say, it must be admitted, that the togetherness is an 
experiential one, a being felt together or experienced together ; ^ 
but this is to supply the defect in the definition by virtually 
introducing into the predicate of the definition the term to be 
defined. 

Our philosopher evidently notices this logical fault, for he 
continues to labor at the problem. He finally offers the doc- 
trine that consciousness is a "selective relation among things," ^ 
and that it is also a "centred, individualized relation." ^ It is, 
in short, "a relation which relates in just the specific way that 

1 Journal of Philosophy, IV, 1907, p. 686. 
2/6., VI, 1909, p. 227; VIII, 1911, pp. 511-12. 
• 3 lb., VIII, 1911, pp. 519, 524. ^ 75.^ ix, 1912, p. 349. 

5 Philosophical Review, XXI, 1912, p. 165. 



NEO-REALISTIC DOCTRINE OF CONSCIOUSNESS 279 

brings about the specific things that we call our experiences." * 
Now, inasmuch as this last seems to mean no more than that 
consciousness is the exact kind of relation which it is, we may 
be complaisant enough to agree, provided we can first accept 
the statement that consciousness is a relation ; and yet we can- 
not admit that this carries us very far toward a definition. 
And even accepting the additional characterizations, "selec- 
tive," "centred," "individualized," as applicable to conscious- 
ness, that they do not give us completely the specific difference 
by which we may distinguish consciousness from all other 
togetherness, is virtually confessed by McGilvary himself, 
when he finds it necessary again to employ that useful word 
"unique." If an experience is a "uniquely integrated whole 
of objects"; 2 and consciousness, a "unique selective rela- 
tion,"-^ we are still left with the questions, How integrated? 
and. What selective relation? unanswered. In other words, 
we are left without a definition. 

Our reference to Boodin's discussion of consciousness may 
well be brief, inasmuch as here again we have the doctrine that 
consciousness is "diaphanous," with the frank but fatal admis- 
sion that this means that it "has no properties."^ In this 
Boodin virtually concedes that, from his point of view, con- 
sciousness is undefinable, if not, indeed, non-existent. But 
this conclusion, under the circumstances, is equivalent to an 
acknowledgment of defeat. 

And now, finally, we turn to look for and examine the doc- 
trine of the six collaborating neo-realists concerning conscious- 
ness. But here again it is disappointing, and especially so in 
view of the collaboration, to find that instead of a doctrine, we 
have doctrines. Among the articles of their common creed 
the six have not found it possible to include a definition of 
consciousness. The mutual relation of their views on the 
subject is interesting, however. There is a fair measure of 
agreement between Marvin, and Holt in his earlier writings, 
on the one hand, and among Spaulding, Pitkin, Perry, and 
Holt in a very recent pubfication, on the other; but Mon- 
tague sets forth in this connection, as before, a doctrine radically 
different from that of any of the others. 

1 lb. 2 7b., p. 166. 3 75.^ p, 171. 4 Journal of Philosophy, V, 1908, p. 232. 



280 THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE 

Marvin's present views on the nature of consciousness were 
anticipated in large measure in his doctor's dissertation/ in 
which he maintains that the distinction between consciousness 
and what is not consciousness is not to be found in the data of 
experience as such, but is a matter of interpretation.^ In his 
recently pubhshed First Book in Metaphysics, although he in- 
cludes in the data of psychology reactions as well as the objects 
correlated therewith,^ consciousness is not identified with the 
reactions so much as with ^Hhe nature, the complexity, and the 
structure of that which controls reactions." * ''A content 
becomes consciousness by becoming . . . the object to which 
an organism reacts." ^ Thus consciousness at any moment is 
apparently identified with the field of consciousness, and de- 
fined as a certain cross-section of, or collocation of entities 
belonging to the universe of subsistent entities, and definable 
as a group by its peculiar relation to our bodily reactions. 
''My consciousness of this page," he writes, ''is Uterally the 
page, the page in certain relations." ® 

In the development of this doctrine Marvin has probably 
been considerably influenced by Holt, whose more fully elabo- 
rated and practically identical theory of consciousness is to be 
found in his recently published volume The Concept of Con- 
sciousness ^ and in his contribution to the volume entitled The 
New Realism. Holt defines consciousness or mind as "a cross- 
section of the universe selected by the nervous system," ^ the 
group of entities within the subsisting universe to which a 
nervous system responds.^ He compares consciousness to the 
cross-section of the environment illuminated by a search-light. 
The cross-section is spatial and includes color-qualities, but it 
is not in the search-light, nor are its contained objects dependent 
on the search-light for their substance or their being. ^^ Simi- 
larly "the phenomenon of response defines a cross-section of 
the environment without, which is a neutral manifold. Now 
this neutral cross-section outside of the nervous system . . . 
coincides exactly with the list of objects of which we say that 

1 Die Giltigkeit unserer Erkenntnis der objektiven Welt, 1898. 

* Op. cit., p. 30. 3 A First Book in Metaphysics, p. 258. 

* lb., p. 259. 5 75.^ p. 261. « lb., p. 263. 

7 Completed in 1908, published in 1914. s The New Realism, pp. 354-5. 
9 lb., p. 373. 1" The Concept of Consciousness, p. 171. 



NEO-REALISTIC DOCTRINE OF CONSCIOUSNESS 281 

we are conscious. This neutral cross-section as defined by the 
specific reaction of reflex-arcs is the psychic realm : — it is 
the manifold of our sensations, perceptions and ideas : — it is 
consciousness." ^ Henceforth in his discussion this '^environ- 
mental cross-section" is referred to as "psychic cross-section," 
''consciousness," "mind," and even "soul," while the indi- 
vidual members of the cross-section are called "sensations," 
"perceptions," "ideas," etc.^ 

This view of Holt and Marvin is the consequence of work- 
ing out the implications of a rather superficial interpretation of 
the reported experience that when we introspect we find only 
things in their relations.^ It is assumed that because conscious- 
ness is not revealed to us as another element alongside of the 
objects of the environment of which we are conscious, it must 
be either dismissed as non-existent, or else identified with the 
objects that are revealed, the only insistence being that it is 
as revealed that they are consciousness. The appearance of 
dogmatism is toned down by the slipping in of the ambiguous 
term, "psychic realm," as mediating between "objects," or 
"field of consciousness," on the one side, and "consciousness" 
on the other. At this point the new realism makes liberal use 
of the very convenient fallacy of equivocation. But it is 
probably vain to expect to produce a sense of logical guilt in 
the mind of one who can proclaim as an epistemological gospel 
the doctrine that his own consciousness (being conscious) of a 
group of objects is neither more nor less than that group of 
objects, as responded to by his physical organism. 

But while Holt (in his published volume and his essay in 
The New Realism) and Marvin build their essentially physical 
conception of consciousness upon a difficulty of introspection, 
the views of Spaulding, Pitkin, Perry, and finally those of Holt 
in his paper, " Response and Cognition," take account also of 
the physiological conception of consciousness which has been 
growing up under the influence of that behaviorist psychology 
which, in turn, is itself largely a product of neo-realistic in- 

1/6., p. 182. 

'76., p. 183, et passim. For a discussion of Holt's combination of this view 
with behaviorism, see pp. 285-7, infra. 

3 Of. re Woodbridge, supra; v. Journal of Philosophy ^ X, 1913, p. 608. 



282 THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE 

fluence, and attempt to combine both conceptions, the phys- 
ical and the physiological, in one synthetic definition. (Pit- 
kin's emphasis, however, is almost entirely on the second of 
the two points of view combined.) 

Spaulding has not expressed himself very much in detail on 
the problem of the nature of consciousness, but he has main- 
tained that consciousness is the function of implying, knowing, 
and pointing to, but in no way modifying, an independently 
real object.^ The term "knowing" does not give us much in- 
formation in this connection, because it is not itself defined, 
but is the main part, if not all, of what, from the realistic point 
of view, has to be defined in the definition of consciousness. 
The term "implying" suggests the method of learning the 
nature of consciousness by what the neo-reaHst tends to sub- 
stitute for introspection, which he finds impossible, viz. an 
analysis of the objective "content" of consciousness. It is 
Woodbridge's definition over again, which we have already 
criticised. The term "pointing to," on the contrary, is seen 
from the context ^ to have a biological meaning, so that here we 
have represented, although the expression is a vague one, the 
type of view that results from regarding consciousness as an 
externally observable relation of the physical organism to other 
objects. The subject of the " implying " seems to be some object 
within the total field, or content, of consciousness ; the subject 
of the "pointing," on the contrary, seems to be the physical or- 
ganism. Apart therefore from the difficulty of conceiving how 
either one can be conscious, this manifest discrepancy between 
the subjects shows that a unitary definition has not been 
offered. 

Pitkin charges the English reaHsts with not having really 
attacked the problem of consciousness, inasmuch as they con- 
tinue to talk of "mental activity," and himself defines the 
problem, as it presents itself to the American new realist, as 
the finding of the differentia of the cognitive activity and that 
of the cognitive field. ^ After a preliminary statement, in which 

^Journal of Philosophy, III, 1906, p. 317; VII, 1910, p. 399; VIII, 1911, 
p. 72. 

2 lb.. Ill, 1906, p. 316. 

3 The New Realism, pp. 439-41. 



NEO-REALISTIC DOCTRINE OF CONSCIOUSNESS 283 

the influence of Dewey is manifest/ to the effect that conscious- 
ness involves a specific environment, a directed activity and the 
operation of an organic structure,^ he ventures the definition 
that consciousness is the crucial advance of the organism toward 
adjustment to external entities.^ Now this is a unitary defini- 
tion, but it frankly reduces psychology to a study which would 
be related to physiology as ecology is related to the physiology 
of plant life : it would be a study of the externally observable 
behavior of the animal organism, human or other, in relation 
to its externally observable environment. Now one may 
understand how Dewey, with his immediate empiricism, or 
disguised psychological idealism, might have some excuse for 
calling this psychology, but the same privilege can scarcely be 
granted to a thoroughgoing realist hke Pitkin. What he has 
given us is a good definition of something else, important 
enough in its own way, but not a definition of consciousness. 
To inquire whether or not this '^ crucial advance of the organ- 
ism toward adjustment to external entities" is accompanied 
by consciousness of those entities is not to ask the meaningless 
question. Is consciousness of anything accompanied by con- 
sciousness of that thing? 

Perry's definition of consciousness is interesting as being 
the result of an explicit attempt to combine the points of view 
of introspection (or what the neo-realist calls introspection) 
and external observation of mind in nature and society. The 
former should give ''the mind within," and the latter, "the 
mind without"; and as these must be, somehow, in reality 
one, a combination of the findings of the two processes ought 
to give us our required definition.^ Now it turns out that when 
we try to introspect our own experience, we find only objects, 
"si chaotic manifold of fragments of the other-than-mind." ^ 
In order to find the common bond between these objects or 
fragments, the basis of their togetherness, we must turn from 
the method of introspection to that of external observation.® 
Thereupon we find the mind without (in nature and society) 

1 Cf. op. cit., p. 437. 2 75.^ p. 442. 3 /&., p. 457. 

< Journal of Philosophy, VI, 1909, pp. 169-70, 172-5 ; Present Philosophical 
Tendencies, pp. 273-4. 

5 Journal of Philosophy, VI, 1909, pp. 170-1. 
* Present Philosophical Tendencies, p. 279. 



284 THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE 

to be behavior, a bodily complex moved by interests.^ But it 
appears that the objects which we discover when we ''intro- 
spect" and the elements of the environment to which the 
''bodily complex" responds are the same. The reflex nervous 
system, responding to an entity in a specific way, makes it a 
content of consciousness,^ i.e. a content discoverable by in- 
trospection. Uniting, therefore, our findings by the two meth- 
ods, we can say that mind, or consciousness, is the environ- 
ment which an organism senses, or, better, it is behavior, to- 
gether with the objects it employs and isolates.^ The natural 
mind, then, is an organization possessing, as aspects, interest, 
nervous system, and contents, or, in other words, externally ob- 
servable action and independently existing contents.^ 

Now in criticism of all this it may be said that the objections 
previously offered to the separate elements of Perry's defini- 
tion apply with undiminished force in spite of their having 
been brought into some sort of combination. In spite of all 
Perry's precautions, he has not succeeded in corralling con- 
sciousness in his definition. Indeed he himself admits that all 
he can discover by what he calls introspection is a "manifold 
of fragments of the other-than-mind." And it is a notorious 
fact that external observation also reveals only movements of 
the bodily complex in relation to its environment, in other 
words, again nothing but "other-than-mind." Indeed in 
many cases the external observer knows not whether to inter- 
pret the behavior which he sees, as accompanied by conscious- 
ness or not. In adding together the results of the two methods, 
Perry has succeeded in "rounding up" all the important asso- 
dates of consciousness, but consciousness itself is not to be 
found in the aggregation; other-than-mind added to other- 
than-mind does not give other than other-than-mind.^ Nor 

1 Journal of Philosophy, VI, 1909, pp. 172-3. 2 76., VII, 1910, p. 397. 

» 76., VI, 1909, pp. 174-5 ; Present Philosophical Tendencies, p. 303. 

* Present Philosophical Tendencies, p. 304. 

6 We neither mean nor need to say here that other-than-a added to other- 
than-a never gives other than other-than-a. For instance, 2 (other than 5) added 
to 3 (other than 5) does give other than other-than-5. We can say this, how- 
ever, only because we know enough about the relation of 2 and 3 to each other 
to know that when taken together they are 5. But we do not know that organic 
behavior in response to the environment, and the objects which it employs and 
isolates, taken together, are mind. Indeed we would not know this, even if we 



NEO-REALISTIC DOCTRINE OF CONSCIOUSNESS 285 

can it even be said that organic response to a selected portion 
of the environment is impossible without consciousness as an 
accompaniment, for we are well aware of results in our own 
experience which have come from unconscious organic response 
to our physical environment. To be sure, the terms "mind" 
and "consciousness" may be used with radically altered mean- 
ing, and arbitrarily applied to the aforesaid sum of elements; 
but it ought to be no less acceptable to the neo-realist, as it 
would be far less misleading, if he were to employ instead of 
these terms some neutral algebraic symbol. His definition 
would then be stripped of the false greatness that has been 
thrust upon it by calling it a definition of mind.^ 

Holt's recent paper on " Response and Cognition "^ will un- 
doubtedly be recognized as one of the important documents of 
the new "behaviorism." While cordially approving the meth- 
ods of investigation employed by the behaviorist psychologists, 
he regards their theories, and fundamentally their definition of 
behavior, as defective; and he sets himself, accordingly, to 
remedy this defect. Thus while the behaviorists tend to treat 
behavior as consisting of reflex activities simply. Holt insists 
that it is essential to note that these reflex activities have been 
so integrated, so organized, that in behavior proper the action, 
while a constant function of some object, process, or aspect of 
the objective environment, is not a function of the immediate 
stimulus. Defining behavior, then — or " the relation of 
specific response," as he suggests it may be called — as "any 
process of release [of stored energy] which is a function of 
factors external to the mechanism released," and assuming that 
the terms with which psychology deals can be adequately trans- 
lated into the terms of the science of behavior, he takes up for 
re-definition some of the more important concepts of ordinary 

knew that whenever the biological selection of objects and organic response 
thereto occur together, the mental relation is present. It might very well be 
that mind was the cause of both the selection of the object and the organic re- 
sponse, and not a mere efifect of their occurrence together, much less a mere 
name for their combination. 

1 In criticising Perry's definition, as not borne out by our everyday knowledge 
of our own consciousness, Russell remarks, " In order to know that such and 
such a thing lies within my experience, it is not necessary to know anything 
about my nervous system " {Monist, XXIV, 1914, p. 184). 

^Journal of Philosophy, XII, 1915, pp. 365-73; 393-409. 



286 THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE 

psychology. In the first place, the object or " content of con- 
sciousness" is simply, from this point of view, the object of 
which the organism's behavior is a constant function. '' Voli- 
tion" is simply what the body does toward the environment, 
'Hhe will" is the behavior function, and the subject of both 
voHtion and cognition is simply the body itself ; in behaviorism 
''the physical organism will . . . supersede the metaphysical sub- 
ject." " The personality, or the soul, ... is the attitude and 
conduct, idem est, the purposes of the body;" ''behaviorism 
can rest unperturbed while the sad procession of spirits, Ghost- 
Souls, 'transcendental' Egos, and what not, passes by and 
vanishes in its own vapor." " Feeling " is simply " some 
modification of response which is determined by factors within 
the organism." "The long sought cognitive relation between 
'subject' and 'object'" thus becomes simply the externally 
observable "behavior relation." When he comes to define 
attention and the stream of consciousness, Holt, in order to 
supplement the point of view of external observation, returns 
to the point of view of that which the neo-realist calls introspec- 
tion, but which is really only the observation of the objects of 
which one is conscious. " The attentive level of consciousness, 
that of which the ' self ' is aware," is then " that most compre- 
hensive environmental field to which the organism has so far at- 
tained (by integration) the capacity to respond." " The ' stream 
of consciousness,' " finally, " is nothing but . . . [the] selected 
procession of the environmental aspects to which the body's 
ever varying motor adjustments are directed." 

In the main the criticisms to be directed against Holt are so 
obvious that their elaborate statement seems superfluous. Most 
of what was said in criticism of Perry's view apphes to this 
doctrine of Holt also ; the chief difference is that Perry would 
acknowledge that not only the objects of which one is conscious, 
but the externally observable behavior also, is "other-than- 
mind." What Holt has given us is, in the main, a very 
valuable analysis of some of the physiological associates of con- 
sciousness ; but the identification of these, throughout, with the 
subject-matter of psychology proper, is both philosophically 
and psychologically inexcusable. Moreover, it may be re- 
marked incidentally. Holt assumes all too easily that behavior, 



NEO-REALISTIC DOCTRINE OF CONSCIOUSNESS 287 

especially human behavior in its most highly conscious forms, 
is an absolutely constant function of the environment, or of any 
part of it. 

Montague rejects the behaviorist interpretation of con- 
sciousness, as a form of "panhylism," almost or quite as 
objectionable as panpsychism, inasmuch as both are self- 
refuting.i He seeks rather to set consciousness forth as a cer- 
tain sort of relation, having been from the first required to do 
so by his theory of the permanent objective existence of second- 
ary quahties.^ In the name of his special brand of monistic 
realism, which in this connection he calls "hylopsychism," ^ 
he holds that there is but one system of realities, and that 
exists in time and space, so that mental processes must be re- 
garded as occurring in space, and consciousness must be inter- 
preted as a relation between spatial objects.^ The question 
is. What sort of a relation is consciousness ? ^ Two sugges- 
tions seem to have been fruitful in shaping Montague's answer 
to this question, viz. the analogy of the search-light,^ which 
Holt has also employed, and the concept of potential energy.^ 
The resemblances between consciousness and potential energy 
are dwelt upon : sensation and energy are similar in being char- 
acterized by both intensity and polarity; and when sensation 
occurs it is at the same time and under the same conditions as 
mark the transformation of the kinetic energy of a neural cur- 
rent into potential energy .^ Moreover, both are essentially 
private and hidden ; both pervade space ; both are teleological.^ 

1 The New Realism, pp. 270-80, 482. 

2 Journal of Philosophy, II, 1905, pp. 314, 315. 

3 The New Realism, pp. 279-81. According to panpsychism physical ob- 
jects are nothing but actual perceptions, or permanent possibilities of perception. 
According to panhylism consciousness is nothing but the possibility of objects, 
or nothing but an epiphenomenal correlate of the brain-process. Hylopsychism 
would eliminate the "nothing but" in both cases. 

4 Journal of Philosophy, IV, 1907, p. 376 ; cf. Monist, XVIII, 1908, pp. 21-9. 

5 Journal of Philosophy, IV, 1907, p. 377. 

6 76., IV, 1907, p. 102 ; cf. IX, 1912, pp. 39-41, 46. 

^ See American Journal of Psychology, XV, 1904, pp. 1-13 ; Journal of Philos- 
ophy, TV, 1907, pp. 378-82; "Consciousness a Form of Energy," Essays . . . 
in Honor of William James, pp. 103-34 ; The New Realism, pp. 281, etc. ; Philo- 
sophical Review, XXIII, 1914, pp. 57-9. 

» Journal of Philosophy, V, 1908, pp. 209-10. 

* Essays . . . in Honor of William James, pp. 126-8. 



288 THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE 

Hence it is suggested that sensations are forms of potential 
energy, that consciousness is potential energy.^ Moreover, 
this would give a positive content to the idea of potential 
energy; the potentiality of the physical would here be the 
actuality of the psychical, just as in the afferent paths and 
centres of the nervous system the actuality of the physical is 
the potentiality of the psychical. ^ Or, in other words, con- 
sciousness objectively implies certain cortical forces, and is 
implied by them.^ The theory is that the external object 
possesses all the secondary as well as primary qualities ob- 
served in normal perception, is colored, for example ; its color 
is also objectively present in the light-waves, in the retina, the 
optic nerve, and the visual centre of the brain. When the 
energy, which throughout all this process retains, it is assumed, 
its specificity,^ becomes potential in the brain, it is transformed 
into consciousness. The brain becomes conscious, i.e. becomes, 
for the time being, a mind.^ This cerebral or conscious event 
has, like every other event, a self -transcending reference.^ 
It is the potential or implicative presence of a thing at a space 
or time at which it is not actually present.^ "The world that 
we perceive is (not indeed an actual but) a virtual or potential 
reprojection of the effects which the world projects upon ws." ^ 

In criticism of this view it may be said at the outset that 
it is dogmatically based upon what can hardly be regarded as 
more than a prejudice, viz. that there is only one sort of reality, 
i.e. a reality in time and space and measurable in terms of 
physical energy. An additional reason for hesitation is found 
in the confessed total absence of verification of the hypothesis 
(which is quite fundamental to the theory) that in normal 
perception the primary energies in the external bodies and in 
the cerebral tracts are specifically the same. Moreover it 
seems dogmatic and even fantastic to suppose — if this is 
what he means — that color-qualities are present throughout 
all the space traversed by the light-waves, and throughout all 

1 Essays . . . in Honor of William James, p. 129. 

2 The New Realism, p. 281 ; Philosophical Review, XXIII, 1914, p. 58. 

3 The New Realism, p. 293 ; Philosophical Review, XXIII, 1914, pp. 57-8. 
* The New Realism, p. 299. 

6 Philosophical Review, XXIII, 1914, p. 59. « 76., p. 57. 

7 The New Realism, p. 281. 8 Philosophical Review, XXIII, 1914, p. 62. 



NEO-REALISTIC DOCTRINE OF CONSCIOUSNESS 289 

the tracts of the brain traversed by the stimulation. This 
surely does not accord with the principle of parsimony. Or if 
it be explained that just as in the case of consciousness there 
is a virtual or potential or implicative presence in the extra- 
organic world of that which is actually in the brain, so there 
is only a virtual or potential or implicative presence of the 
qualities of the external object in the brain, so that there is 
simply the cancelling of one self-transcendence by means of 
another in the opposite direction, the external object being 
virtually put back where it actually belongs, but from which 
it had virtually strayed, one is still unable to see how such 
virtual presence of the external object where it is not (viz. in 
the brain) can actually he the virtual presence of the perceived 
object where it is not (viz. in the external world) in any such 
way as would allow for enough difference between the actually 
external object and the virtually-introjected-virtually-repro- 
jected object to explain the possihility of error, to explain which 
seems to have been the chief raison d^^tre of this elaborate 
theory. On the other hand, if there is enough difference for 
the possibility of error, there must necessarily be a total nu- 
merical difference between the two, in which case there is too 
much difference for the possihility of knowledge. In this case, 
as we have previously pointed out,^ Montague's realistic epis- 
temological monism would seem to be entirely a matter of 
faith, in the sense of believing what there is sufficient reason 
for disbelieving. These considerations, then, without further 
reference to his rejection of the idea of memory images, ideas 
or sensations as really existing,^ seem sufficient ground for de- 
cUning to accept Montague's ingenious and in some ways 
attractive speculations as to the nature of consciousness. 

In concluding this investigation of the neo-realistic doctrines 
of consciousness, it may be instructive briefly to compare and 
contrast the results arrived at by the English and American 
schools. In each of the largely separate developments of 
thought there is discoverable something of the nature of a 
dialectical process. The English new realists, reacting against 
the extreme idealistic philosophies which made consciousness 
the only and all-inclusive Being, took up the question as to 

1 See Ch. XI, supra. 2 Philosophical Review, XXIII, 1914, p. 60. 

XJ 



290 THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE 

just what existent consciousness is, if it is true that it is only 
an existent among other existent things. The answer was 
soon forthcoming that it is not an existent at all, unless it is a 
relation between existents, in particular a relation between a 
really existent subject and a world of really existent objects. 
But when the question was raised as to just what relation con- 
sciousness is, difficulties and diversities of opinion began to 
appear. Several largely distinct lines of thought may be 
regarded as developing the antithesis to the thesis that con- 
sciousness is a relation, and as marking the transition in the 
direction of the synthetic view that consciousness cannot be a 
relation unless it is also and at the same time a productive or 
creative psychical activity. For example, we have Stout'& 
contention that, applied to fictitious objects, the doctrine that 
consciousness is an external relation can only mean that such 
objects have genuinely independent reahty, since the whole 
reality of any object cannot be included in its relation to 
something else. That Stout does not seem to see the way out 
of his difficulty by means of the concept of productive activity, 
or even to see how antithetical to the merely relational view 
of consciousness the considerations he advances are, makes his 
contribution to the antithetical stage of the dialectic all the 
more impressive. Wolf, on the other hand, developing some 
of the antithetical considerations to the view of Moore and 
Alexander that consciousness is a purely diaphanous relation 
between subject and object, makes definite progress toward a 
higher synthesis. It is necessary to think of consciousness as 
a productive activity in some cases; we can only consent to 
regard it as a purely diaphanous relation in normal perception ; 
in all cases of error, perceptual or other, it is an activity pro- 
ductive of its object. This idea of consciousness as a produc- 
tive activity is carried much further by McDougall, although 
to what extent under the influence of neo-realistic thought it is 
not easy to say. At any rate he applies it so far, especially 
in the case of sense-qualities, that he cannot be regarded as 
one of the neo-realistic school. On the other hand he does not 
seem fully to appreciate the philosophical significance of the 
idea of consciousness which he introduces rather casually 
toward the close of his volume, Bodij and Mind. On the whole, 



NEO-REALISTIC DOCTRINE OF CONSCIOUSNESS 291 

however, from the standpoint to be defended in our later con- 
structive attempt, it would seem that the dialectic of EngHsh 
neo-realism has been leading in the general direction of the 
true solution of the problem of consciousness. 

Turning to the American movement we find a parallel but 
strangely different phenomenon. Here too, in reaction against 
extreme idealistic views, the problem emerged as to what 
consciousness is, if we cannot say that it is the all-embracing 
reality. By such thinkers as James, Woodbridge, Holt, and 
others, arguments, critical and constructive, i.e. antithetical 
and synthetical, were presented, to show that consciousness is 
not an existent, but a mere relation among existents. The 
chief difference between the American and English schools at 
this point, however, is that while the English realists have 
contended that consciousness is a relation between a psychical 
or mental subject and physical objects, the Americans have 
generally maintained that it is a relation between or among 
physical objects. But here again, when the question was 
raised as to just what relation between objects consciousness is, 
considerations antithetical to the relational view were brought 
to light. For example, Woodbridge and Perry, although in 
different ways, have expressed the conviction that conscious- 
ness is not a relation between objects unless it is also an activity 
of one object (the physical organism or nervous system) upon 
other objects. This latter view has been developed at length 
by the behaviorists — to the bitter end, we take it, by some of 
them. Indeed, in the above exposition and discussion of the 
American neo-realistic doctrine of consciousness it has been 
shown, we think, that its dialectic has been leading it with 
resistless logic to a thoroughgoing self -refutation. Views such 
as those of Singer and Watson and Frost, to mention only the 
most extravagant developments, really constitute a reductio 
ad absurdum of some at least of their presuppositions. And if 
the question be raised as to how it can be maintained that this 
dialectical movement from existent to relation and from rela- 
tion to activity can lead in the one case (that of English neo- 
realism) toward a true position, and in the other (that of 
American neo-realism) to a reductio ad absurdum, our answer 
would be that the most plausible explanation of the difference 



292 THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE 

seems to be that it is due to the one conspicuous difference 
between the presuppositions of the two schools. That is, it 
must be because the Enghsh new reahsts, speaking generally, 
have regarded the subject of consciousness as psychical, 
mental, spiritual, while the Americans have quite as unani- 
mously insisted upon viewing it as physical. But further 
discussion of this point we must defer until we turn from crit- 
icism to construction. 



CHAPTER XIII 

The Neo-Realistic Doctrine of Relations, Universals, 

AND Values 

Our critique of the new realism has thus far centred about 
its position with reference to secondary quahties and the 
nature of consciousness, but some further grounds of objection 
may be found, in our opinion, from an examination of its doc- 
trine as to relations, universals, and values. To such an ex- 
amination we now turn. 

With reference to the neo-reaUstic doctrine of the externality of 
relations, it should be understood that it is a further generali- 
zation (in the interests of system and for the sake of deductive 
epistemology) of the doctrine of the externality of the know- 
ing or conscious relation, or, in other words, of the known 
object's absolute independence of the circumstance of its being 
known. For it is evident that if it could be maintained that 
all relations are external to the terms related, one could deduce 
the externality of the knowing relation, so far as the object is 
concerned, or the independence of the known object from the 
knowing relation. On the other hand, even if it can only be 
shown that some other relations are external to one or both 
of their terms, there will be a certain added plausibility in the 
view that being known is an external relation, and the known 
object, therefore, independently real. 

The English neo-realists, with the exception of Bertrand 
Russell, do not seem to have gone into the question of the 
internality or externality of relations in any very thorough- 
going manner. T. P. Nunn admits that some relations make 
a difference to the object observed,^ but he gives us neither a 
catalogue of those which make a difference, and so are pre- 
sumably internal, nor a method by which we can distinguish 

1 Proc. Aristot. Soc, 1909-10, p. 206. 
293 



294 THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE 

internal relations from those which are external. Alexander 
remarks that if we mean by the internality of a relation that it 
cannot exist independently of its terms, then in this sense 
relations are internal to their terms. ^ This is undoubtedly a 
highly defensible position to take, but it does not deal with 
the question which is of primary concern to the neo-realist. 
It would be coming closer to the real question to ask whether 
a term can exist independently of its relations ; but the exact 
point of dispute is whether the correct thing to say is that all 
relations make a difference to their terms, or that some do and 
some do not, or that none do. Stout, in his remark that no 
being can be entirely constituted by its relation to something 
else,2 assumes that every term must be at least partially in- 
dependent of any one of its relations; but, in view of the 
possibility of creative causality being one of the relations, does 
not even this comparatively modest expression seem unwar- 
ranted? If there is creative activity, some being or quality 
must depend for its existence upon something else being re- 
lated to it in this particular relation of creative causality. . 

Russell's doctrine of relations is explicit and highly pertinent 
to the question as to the basis of realism. In the first place 
he holds that relatedness does not imply any corresponding 
complexity in the terms related, so that the anti-realistic argu- 
ment on the basis of the internality of all relations is not validly 
founded.^ This may be regarded as safe ground to occupy, 
but it leaves unanswered the question as to whether there are 
not some relations which are internal to their terms, and es- 
pecially, this question being answered in the affirmative, the 
further question how some relations can be internal and others 
external to the terms which they relate. RusselFs doctrine 
that relations are real entities (not existences but subsistences) 
apart from any terms, we shall examine in connection with his 
theory of universals; but here it may be remarked that this 
doctrine seems to involve the absolute externality of all rela- 
tions. In this case the above moderate statements would 
have to be taken as representing less than the whole (im- 

1 Mind, N.S., XXI, 1912, p. 310. ^ Proc. Aristot. Soc, 1910-11, p. 187. 

3 Journal of Philosophy, VIII, 1911, pp. 158-9. Cf. The Principles of Math- 
ematics, pp. 221-6. 



NEO-REALISTIC DOCTRINE OF RELATIONS 295 

portant) truth, from his point of view, and as having been made 
with a view to controversial security. 

Among the American neo-reahsts detailed discussion of the 
internality or externality of relations has almost been confined 
to the six ''programmists." In the introductory chapter of 
The New Realism, which represents the views of all six, it is 
stated: ''Realism rejects the premise that all relations are 
internal. . . . The evidence at present available indicates 
that while all things may perhaps be related, many of these 
relations are not constitutive or determinative, i.e. do not 
enter into the explanation of the nature or existence of their 
terms." ^ 

Sometimes it is difficult to see that complete self-consistency 
has been maintained in the different statements that bear upon 
the theory of relations. Thus Montague, in one of his early 
statements, seems clearly to imply the externality of all re- 
lations. "All relations," he says, ''presuppose the existence 
of the terms between which they subsist," and from this the 
possible independent existence of the terms is inferred, so that 
logical priority has evidently been fallaciously interpreted to 
mean chronological priority, or previous (and hence indepen- 
dent) existence. 2 Again, much more recently, he has main- 
tained that the internal view, that the nature of the parts of a 
complex depends upon the nature of the whole complex, is 
fallacious, apparently because, as he sees it, this would require 
one to believe that knowledge of merely a part of the truth is 
necessarily false. ^ It would seem, however, that the nature of 
the parts might depend upon the nature of the whole in some 
respects not requiring to be contemplated in a particular 
judgment, which might therefore be true notwithstanding its 
not being the whole truth. But what we set out to show was 
the evident discrepancy between Montague's statements as 

1 The New Realism, p. 33 ; cf. statements in Journal of Philosophy, VII, 
.1910, pp. 393-401. 

2 Journal of Philosophy, II, 1905, p. 313. What Montague is concerned to 
maintain here is the mutual implication of realism and the relational view of 
consciousness. " If consciousness is a relation, objects of consciousness must be 
real independently of their standing in that relation, while conversely, if objects 
are real independently of a consciousness or knowledge of them, then that con- 
sciousness or knowledge can not be anything other than a relation between them." 

« The New Realism, p. 299. 



296 THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE 

referred to, and the implication of his scornful question in 
another connection : ''What kind of an object would it be, for- 
sooth, which remained completely unaltered by the relations 
in which it stood?" ^ Perhaps Montague would explain away 
the discrepancy by saying that only what is true as a particular, 
and not what is universally true, is thus dependent upon par- 
ticular relations ; but this is all that the opponent of the new 
realism ordinarily maintains. But inasmuch as Montague 
evidently holds ^ that the universal includes all the particulars, 
each in its own particular relation, he cannot consistently main- 
tain that he knows a thing as it really is, when part of what it 
really is depends upon an unknown relation. He thinks of it 
as if it were not what it really is. 

Holt and Marvin also make statements that lead them into 
evident self-contradiction. Holt makes the general statement 
that the entities of the universe are related by external re- 
lations,^ and yet on the same page he admits that it is seldom 
possible to say just where the object itself terminates and its 
relations to other entities commence. Now if we are going 
to insist that nothing must be interpreted as a relation which 
is not wholly external to the term, what seem to be relations 
and yet are internal to the term will have to be interpreted as 
part of the object, and not as a relation. But Holt defines 
mind as that cross-section of the environment, a neutral mani- 
fold, which is defined or selected by the response of the nervous 
system.^ Now this seems to mean that mind is a neutral mani- 
fold as selected, or in the relation of being selected, by an organ- 
ism, and not when not thus selected. Here then we have that 
which is what it is (viz. mind) solely by virtue of its relation 
to something else. But this is for that relation to be internal 
to its term (mind), and it would but thinly disguise the break- 
down of the theory to say that it is difficult here to say where 
the object terminates and the relation begins. 

Essentially similar is the criticism to be made against Marvin, 
who states the doctrine of the externality of relations in universal 
terms,^ and then makes the statement about consciousness 

1 Journal of Philosophy, V, 1908, p. 211. 2 76. 

3 The New Realism, p. 372. * The Concept of Consciousness, p. 182. 

5 Journal of Philosophy, VII, 1910, p. 395. 



NEO-REALISTIC DOCTRINE OF RELATIONS 297 

to which we have already referred : ''My consciousness of this 
page is hterally the page, the page in certain relations ... A 
field of consciousness is a certain cross-section, a certain col- 
lection, of entities, belonging to the universe of subsistent 
entities and definable as a group by its peculiar relation to our 
bodily reactions." ^ Here, then, is a relation, the relation which 
makes the subsistent, or existent, into the mental, or conscious- 
ness, and* which is therefore internal so far as consciousness is 
concerned — a manifest exception to the doctrine of the uni- 
versal externality of relations. 

The other three of the six, viz. Spaulding, Pitkin, and Perry, 
have argued more at length for the external view of relations. 
Spaulding builds his realism upon this view. The external 
view, he claims, is self-consistent, and is therefore established, 
as against all other systems which are based upon the internal 
view, which is self-refuting.^ He maintains that the supporter 
of the internal view tacitly or surreptitiously employs the ex- 
ternal view with reference to his own system, in the supposition 
that reality, apart from any relation to the knower, is what the 
internal view takes it to be; and that the internal view thus 
presupposes its own contradictory, and so refutes itself. But 
while the internal view, if not applied to itself, is seen to be self- 
refuting, when it is so applied, the result is, ''on the one hand, 
that by his own theory his own knowledge of his own theory 
is a knowledge only of that which is appearance, and yet on 
the other hand, that he can never know whether this is real ap- 
pearance or not, because the modifying effect of knowledge can 
never be eliminated. And again, by his own theory he cannot 
know that even all this is the real state of affairs, and so on in 
an infinite regress." ^ 

This is valuable criticism, but it is valid only against the view 
that all relations must always be taken as internal, and of 
course fails to show that all relations must always be taken 
as external. Now it may be that the opponents of realism make, 
as Spaulding charges, an "arbitrary use of the 'internal view' 
for certain purposes, and ... of the 'external view' in other 

1 A First Book in Metaphysics, p. 263. 

2 Journal of Philosophy, VII, 1910, p. 400. 

3 Philosophical Review, XIX, 1910, pp. 276-7, 299-300, 620-1. 



298 THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE 

connections," ^ but that does not mean that there may not be 
a justifiable principle according to which one may regard cer- 
tain relations as either internal or external. And that Spaulding 
himself cannot regard all relations as always external is evident 
from his guarded statement that "a term may stand in one or 
in many relations to one or many other terms," and that ''any 
of these terms and . . . some ^ of these relations could be ab- 
sent . . . without there being any resulting modification of 
the remaining . . . terms or relations." ^ In thus regarding 
some relations only as external, without showing the principle 
involved in this selection, is not Spaulding also ''arbitrary"? 
In his contribution to the volume entitled The New Realism, 
again, he argues successfully against those who would dispute 
the possibility of analysis, or the validity of its results, resting 
their contention on the presupposition that independence and 
relatedness are mutually exclusive ; but the limits of what he 
accomplishes are indicated in the statement: "The question 
in which we are chiefly interested is not whether the internal 
theory has no application, but simply whether this apphcation 
can be universal." ^ He criticises the upholder of the internal 
view as unable to be consistent, since he cannot make his theory 
universal ; ^ but he himseK neither makes the external view 
universal, nor gives us any adequate principle by which the 
internahty or externahty of relations may be determined. It 
is true that he undertakes an empirical investigation in order 
to discover just when, in cases of actual synthesis, new prop- 
erties appear ; and this is good as far as it goes. But besides 
calling attention to the fact that he feels obliged to leave it an 
open question whether or not the parts always remain un- 
changed by the synthesis,^ we would criticise his whole treat- 
ment of the topic as not taking into account the fact that our 
ordinarily practical necessities require us to treat one and the 
same relation sometimes as internal and sometimes as external. 
Pitkin, in his essay entitled "Some Reahstic Implications 
of Biology," admits that the realist cannot count his case won 

1 Philosophical Review, XIX, 1910, p. 621. 2 Italics mine. 

3 Journal of Philosophy, VII, 1910, p. 400. 

4 The New Realism, pp. 165, 167. 

P/6., p. 168. «/6., p. 241. 



NEO-REALISTIC DOCTRINE OF RELATIONS 299 

until he has disproved the anti-reaUstic inferences drawn from 
the biological sciences by Driesch, Bergson, and Dewey. The 
first mentioned, on the basis of a vitalistic interpretation of 
biological facts, concludes that the Kantian view of the con- 
struction of the entire '^ content" of experience by the Ego is 
vindicated. Bergson contends that all discreteness is pro- 
duced by the ''vital force" ; while Dewey regards theories and 
ideas as genuine constructions of the thinker. ^ Pitkin's op- 
position to Dewey at this point will come in for consideration in 
our discussion of the neo-reahstic doctrine of universals. More- 
over, his destructive efforts directed toward the Kantian super- 
structure which Driesch would erect upon his vitalistic founda- 
tion, we can view with a large measure of complacency and even 
approval. We may admit also that Bergson speculates away 
beyond his empirical data in his doctrine of a cosmic vital force 
fundamental to matter as well as idea. But when Pitkin 
claims to have made the ''discovery" that "organic parts do not 
depend upon the whole in which they naturally occur, except in 
an empty sense of the verb," ^ we must object that he claims too 
much. He cites, in support of the above proposition, the re- 
sults of some grafting experiments, in which he says there was 
no trace of mutual influence determining the development of 
the two parts. But, we would reply, not only has Driesch taken 
account of such phenomena ; but even as long ago as 1891 he yer- 
formed the experiment of killing one of the first two cleavage- 
cells of the egg of a sea-urchin, and found not that one-half 
of an embryo was reared out of the surviving cell, but a com- 
plete embryo of one-half the normal size. In this way he demon- 
strated that the range of possibilities for the development of a 
cleavage-cell was much wider than its prospective value under 
normal conditions of development — a fact which seems to in- 
dicate the inadequacy of a purely mechanistic theory of em- 
bryonic development. 3 It may be, as Pitkin claims, that there 
is some kind or measure of "organic pluralism," ^ but in view of 
facts of the sort just cited, he cannot convincingly argue for 
the universal externahty of biological relations, especially that 

1 The New Realism, pp. 378-80. 2 75.^ pp. 422-3. 

3 H. Driesch, The Problem of Individuality, 1914, pp. 10 ff. 
* Op. cit., p. 425. 



300 THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE 

of the whole developing organism to its parts. This being the 
case, much less has he the right to defend the universal external- 
ity of relations, which seems to be the desired major premise for 
inferring the universal externality of the knowing relation, in 
the sense of "the complete independence of all things thought 
of," ^ or otherwise cognized. All that is really shown is that 
monistic reaUsm may be regarded, a priori, as conceivable, 
because of the discovery that some things are sometimes inde- 
pendent of some of the relations in which they stand, or that 
some relations are sometimes external. But this much, the 
ideaHst to the contrary notwithstanding, may be admitted as 
a part of common, everyday knowledge. Moreover, Pitkin 
incidentally makes the same damaging admission as that of 
Holt and Marvin referred to above. The ''indiscernibility of 
seeming from being," he says, is to be attributed to the relations 
in which they stand. In one set of relations they are ''indis- 
cernibles," while in other relations they are readily distinguished 
from each other.^ Here it would seem that the neo-realist, in 
his anxiety to explain the possibility of error, has allowed him- 
self to admit that a mere matter of relation can make so great 
a difference as that between seeming and being. Such a rela- 
tion is surely not external; the mere difference in the object 
between seeming and not seeming, would be enough, it might 
be argued, if we were very exacting, to show the awareness- 
relation between subject and object to be not absolutely external 
to the object; but the difference between mere seeming and 
being is a much greater difference, a difference only less, so far 
as these categories are concerned, than that between being and 
not seeming. 

Perry, like the others, argues for reaHsm by defending, as 
far as he logically can, if not farther, the doctrine of the ex- 
ternahty of relations.^ His earHer statement of the theory as 
the doctrine that "terms acquire from their new relations 
an added character, which does not either condition or neces- 
sarily alter the character which they already possess," ^ seems 

1 The New ReaUsm, p. 380. 

2 Ih., pp. 466-7. 

3 Present Philosophical Tendencies, pp. 319 f. ; "A Realistic Theory of Inde- 
pendence," in The New Realism, pp. 126-51. 

* Present Philosophical Tendencies, p. 319. 



NEO-REALISTIC DOCTRINE OF RELATIONS 301 

to dodge the main point of dispute. Of course a term, when 
related in any specific way, has the character of being thus re- 
lated, but the question is whether, because it is thus related, it 
ever comes to be different from what it was, or needs to be 
treated as different. Perry says that in the complex (a)R(6) 
the term a does not derive its content from R(6) ; ^ but before 
we can assent we must know what is meant. If it is meant that 
the content which a had before it was related to h is not derived 
from its relation to 6, this may be accepted as a mere truism ; 
but if it is meant that a in relation to h need never be treated 
as different from a when not in that relation, it is contradicted 
by our experience every day. Perry says 'Hhe content of 
things is in no case made up of relations beyond themselves" ; ^ 
but here we find the same ambiguity. If it is meant that the 
content of a thing is never made up, even in part, of its external 
relations, we can only say, Of course not ; the relations would 
not be ''external" if they made up any part of the content. 
If on the contrary what is meant is that we need never include 
any of the relations in which an object stands, in order to know 
what it is to be taken as, practically, again we must say, on the 
basis of everyday experience. This is by no means true. 

In his contribution to The New Realism, however, Perry has 
done much to clarify the situation with reference to relations. 
He sets out to give the neo-reahstic theory of independence. By 
independence he means not non-relation, but simply non-de- 
pendence.^ But while all relation is not denied, certain relations 
are declared to be absent when one entity is said to be inde- 
pendent of another.^ These relations are those of containing 
and being contained, causing and being exclusively caused, 
and implying and being exclusively implied.^ When not re- 
lated in any of these ways, two entities are, according to Perry, 
independent of each other. This would seem to be true when 
independent means not dependent for being existent, or true; 
but if independent means not dependent for its significance, it 
is obvious that a thing may often be regarded as independent 
of some of the above relations, while it is often dependent — ■ 
and this is the fact that is damaging to the theory in which 

1 lb., p. 319. 2 75.^ p. 320. 3 The New Realism, p. 113. 

*/6., p. 117. 6/5., pp. 113, 151. 



302 THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE 

Perry is interested — upon relations not included in the above 
list. 

In summing up our criticism of the neo-reaUstic doctrine of 
relations, then, we may say that while the new reaUsts are 
successful in showing that the doctrine that all relations are al- 
ways internal is not correct, and while they are thus able to 
undermine one of the stock arguments for idealism (that 
drawn from the alleged internality, to any term, of the relation 
of being known), they are not able to show that all relations are 
always external, and so cannot by this means prove the reaHstic 
theory of knowledge. At most they can show that the known 
object may perhaps in some cases exist independently, and 
essentially without change through the circumstance of its 
being known. But even so, they leave the whole subject in a 
very unsatisfactory condition, for they fail to mention any 
adequate criterion by which it may be determined whether or 
not a particular relation is or is not in any case external. 

We now pass to an examination of the neo-realistic doctrine 
of universals. At this point the approximation of the new 
philosophy to Platonic doctrine has been remarked by many, 
and is acknowledged by the realists themselves. Bertrand 
Russell, in treating of entities which have "a being in some way 
different from that of physical objects, and also different from 
that of minds and from that of sense-data," acknowledges that 
his theory is "largely Plato's, with merely such modifications 
as time has shown to be necessary." ^ Inasmuch as close simi- 
larity to Plato's doctrine, as they interpret it, is also claimed by 
Alexander ^ and by the six authors of The New Realism, who 
assert that the neo-realist is also a Platonic realist,^ it may be 
well to refer again to what we take to be the relation between the 
Platonic and the neo-realistic doctrines. The original and 
fundamental Platonism, as we have already pointed out, was 
the doctrine that the true nature of reality is to be found in 
the universal or logical idea. But, as we have seen, by a 
process of conversion, fallacious or other, supported by ab- 

1 Problems of Philosophy, pp. 142-3. 

2 Proc. Aristot. Soc, 1909-10, p. 33. 

3 The New Realism, p. 35 ; cf. also Montague, Essays . . . in Honor of Will- 
iam Jam.es, pp. 113-14; Perry, Journal of Philosophy, VII, 1910, p. 345; 
Marvin, A First Book in Metaphysics, pp. 108 fif. 



NEO-REALISTIC DOCTRINE OF RELATIONS 303 

stracting from the abstractness of logical idealism and thus dis- 
guising it, various forms of logical realism were evolved. Plato 
himself, as we have seen, predicated some sort, or sorts, of reality 
of some, or even of all, universal ideas ; some were real in the 
eternal world, all were real either there or in the things of human 
experience. But that the essence of Platonism, as of the only 
sound philosophy, was the predicating of eternal reality, usually 
not distinguished from existence, of all universals, was main- 
tained by the mediaeval Platonic realists. The neo-realists, 
like these mediaeval realists, are interested in maintaining 
the full "ontological status," or reality, of all universals, al- 
though with some individual variations. The most charac- 
teristic doctrine is that which has been developed by Bertrand 
Russell, who, influenced by his mathematical studies, asserts 
the reality of a world which is neither mental nor physical, 
but made up of those entities which are the objects of a priori 
knowledge.^ These entities, he admits, cannot be properly 
said to exist; they subsist, rather, i.e. they have timeless being 
in the unchangeable world of universals, with which the mathe- 
matician and the logician deal. They are not thoughts, though 
when known they are the objects of thought. ^ Several of the 
American realists agree with Russell in thus attributing to 
universals only timeless '^ subsistence," whereas existence in 
time is reserved for particulars, whether physical, mental, or 
neutral.^ Alexander, however, interprets Plato as having 
taught that ideas are real existences, and makes bold to agree 

1 The Problems of Philosophy, pp. 139-40. 

2 lb., pp. 155-6. In a discussion published some years previously (Mind, 
N.S., XIV, 1905, V. pp. 398, 399), Russell uses the term "existence" with 
reference to the entities dealt with in mathematics, explaining, however, that 
this does not mean existence in the sense in which it is used in philosophy and 
in common life. Rather does it mean reality for mathematics, the being which 
all classes have, whether they possess any members or not. But he seems to 
mean something rather more positive than the mere freedom from contradic- 
tion which Poincare gives as the meaning of mathematical existence. Like the 
"Cantorians," Russell and his followers seem to be, in their doctrine of the 
abstract entities of mathematics, realists (v. Poincar6, Derni^res Pensees, pp. 146, 
157-8). 

3 E.g. Holt, Journal of Philosophy, VII, 1910, p. 394 ; The New Realism, 
pp. 366, 372; The Concept of Consciousness, passim; Spaulding, Journal of 
Philosophy, VIII, 1911, pp. 576-7; The New Realism, p. 180; Marvin, Perry, 
and Montague, loo. cit. 



S04 THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE 

with him when so interpreted, adding only that the particulars 
of sense are equally existent, equally real.^ Pitkin also seems 
incHned to take this apparently more radical, but perhaps more 
defensible, position.^ 

It must not be supposed, however, that the neo-reahsts have 
deliberately set themselves to revive Platonism. Their doctrine 
is to be explained rather as the product of the neo-reahstic 
doctrine of consciousness (itself, as we have seen, a result of 
the neo-realistic doctrine of secondary as well as primary quali- 
ties), and of certain suggestions along the line of a disguised 
logical idealism (which amounts almost to logical realism), 
supported by and even derived from the impression made by 
abstract mathematical studies, such as have been pursued by 
Russell. The latter transition we have already referred to.^ 
In elucidation of the former, we may say that it seems natural 
to suppose that if consciousness is a mere external relation in 
the case of physical objects, it cannot well be more in the case 
of the entities with which mathematics deals, and the universal 
vahdity of the propositions of pure mathematics is readily in- 
terpreted ontologically as meaning an eternal reality of the 
*' universals " or abstract entities with which it is concerned. So 
long as we are thinking about any object of thought, even the 
unreal, we must treat it, to some extent and momentarily, as if 
it were real; and the fallacy of substantiating an abstraction 

1 Proc. Aristot. Soc, 1909-10, p. 33. One is tempted to ask why Alexander, 
as a good member of an Aristotelian Society, did not take his departure from 
Aristotle rather than from Plato. He would then have confined himself to 
asserting the existence of universals in the particulars. But, in the light of his 
representation of the categories as fundamental characters of things {Mind, 
N.S., XXI, 1912, p. 11), one may conjecture that it has already dawned upon 
him that this is what he means. McGilvary's procedure and doctrine seem to 
be more Aristotelian. See Philosophical Review, XXI, 1912, pp. 153 ff. 

2 "The Empirical Status of Geometrical Entities," Journal of Philosophy, 
X, 1913, pp. 393-403. At this point Morris R. Cohen claims to find himself in 
agreement with the neo-realists. He indorses "a realism of relations or uni- 
versals like Plato's," which he not very accurately takes to be "the essence of the 
historic form of idealism." He objects to the distinction here between existence 
and subsistence, and would accord to mathematical entities full reality, including 
causal efficiency. He desiderates "a complete theory of categories, or types of 
existence, to take the place of the rather inadequate distinction between existence 
and subsistence." Journal of Philosophy, X, 1913, pp. 198-200, 209 ; XI, 1914, 
pp. 626-7. 

3 ChSf y ^nd X, sujyra. 



NEO-REALISTIC DOCTRINE OF RELATIONS 305 

is simply a special case of doing this, and forgetting or per- 
manently ignoring the nature of what we are doing; it is, as 
we have said before, abstracting from the abstractness of the 
universal. 

The results are in some instances remarkable enough. Among 
the many creations of thought, or abstractions, which are taken 
as independently real are Stout's generalities, alternative possi- 
bilities, non-being, centaurs and other fictions,^ Holt's contra- 
dictions,2 and Russell's abstract relations, or universals named 
by verbs and prepositions. For example, ''north of," though it 
does not exist apart from its terms in space or time, is regarded 
as eternally subsisting; it ''belongs to the independent world 
which thought apprehends but does not create."^ Similarly, 
according to Russell, an infinite aggregate, in spite of the fact 
that it contradicts the principles of "mathematical induction," 
on which all our arithmetical operations are based, must be ac- 
cepted as real.* These entities are thought of, and therefore, it 
is claimed, they are not thoughts, but objects of thought, real 
independently of and prior to thinking.^ It ought not to be 
surprising, then, to find Russell reviving the old doctrine of 
Reid as to the needlessness of ideas. We do not need ideas, 
he claims, in order to know, even otherwise than perceptually.^ 

And yet Russell has felt obliged to make the important ad- 
mission that "what idealists have said about the creative ac- 

^ Proc. Aristot. Soc, 1910-11, p. 187 £f. " Whatever is thought, in so far as it 
is thought, is therefore real," p. 199. Cf . Montague : " If consciousness is a re- 
lation, objects of consciousness must be real independently of their standing in 
that relation." Journal of Philosophy, II, 1905, p. 313. 

2 The New Realism, pp. 482-3. 

3 Problems of Philosophy, pp. 147, 152-6. 

4 Principles of Mathematics, pp. 142-3, 260, 357, 368, etc. Russell, by his 
rejection of the idea of possibility as an ultimate metaphysical category (Monist, 
XXIV, 1914, p. 179), makes it necessary to hold to the actuality of the infinite. 
We would maintain that the only infinite is unending possibility, given unending 
time, Russell seems to have ruled this out unnecessarily, inasmuch as he holds 
to the reality of time. 

5 Problems of Philosophy, pp. 155-6 ; Principles of Mathematics, p. 46. Russell 
does not mean that these objects of thought necessarily exist in time, but only 
that they have timeless being. 

The new realism here goes to the opposite extreme from the idealistic argument 
from the egocentric predicament, in which it is assumed, roughly speaking, that 
what is thought of depends upon thought for its existence. 
8 Monist, XXIV, 1914, p. 171. 
X 



306 THE PROBLEM OP KNOWLEDGE 

tivity of mind, about relations being due to our relating synthe- 
sis, and so on, seems to be true in the case of error." ^ But, 
apart from the fact that it seems rather paradoxical to regard all 
correct thought as absolutely non-productive, and erroneous 
thought alone as productive, it seems quite arbitrary to inter- 
pret so differently the nature of mental activities that differ only 
in what is beyond them altogether, viz. in the reaUty existing 
prior to and independently of them. If there is mental pro- 
ductivity in the case of error, there is probably mental pro- 
ductivity in other cases also. And if so, non-fictitious universals 
can be adequately interpreted as existing independently, in 
space and time, in ^particulars, and as represented by ideas, 
which are products of mental activity and exist only "in" 
and for consciousness, while fictitious objects (including, we 
would claim, irrational quantities and the "infinite aggregate") 
are sufficiently explained as existing only as products of thought. 
The realm of subsistence is not required, save as itself a con- 
venient fiction, the product, fundamentally, of abstracting 
thought.2 

Before summing up our criticism of the new reaHsm we must 
briefly refer to its treatment of the problem of values. Here 
the question of chief interest will be whether, in accordance 
with the view that consciousness is an external relation, it will 
be maintained that value is independent of consciousness of 
value. That it is thus independent is stated by Moore and 
Russell. Moore argues that goodness is a quality attaching 
to things independently of consciousness,^ and Russell makes 
the general statement that values are independent of conscious- 
ness.^ This view, however, while it is the logical one for the 
neo-realist, is not easily tenable, in view of the many values that 
seem to arise and fluctuate and disappear according to the con- 
scious attitude of the individual or of society toward the objects 
concerned. Four of the neo-realists, viz. McGilvary, Alexander, 
Montague, and Perry, have more or less definitely addressed 
themselves to the difficult task of constructing a theory of values 
to harmonize with the facts in the case, and also with the doc- 

1 Monist, XXIV, 1914, p. 174. 2 Cf. pp. 84-8, 201-6, 231, 264-5, supra. 
3 Principia Ethica, pp. 6, 137. 
^ Philosophical Essays, pp. 4—15. 



NEO-REALISTIC DOCTRINE OF RELATIONS 307 

trines of neo-realism. Let us see whether or not they have 
succeeded in their undertaking. 

McGilvary's treatment of the subject is rather incidental, 
but his expedient is to define value as a relation — "sl certain 
specific relation between the valuable thing and our desires and 
interests." ^ But this does not seem to be true to the facts. 
The value of an object may depend upon its relation to some 
other thing or process, but it is, on the face of it, a quality of 
that object. 

Alexander, it would almost seem, has recognized this; at 
any rate he makes room for values when he speaks of the ap- 
pearance of the object containing elements introduced into it 
by the mind. These elements, it would appear, need not 
vitiate the appearance, provided they are not unduly personal ; 
but, having been made qualities of the object in its appearance, 
they are, as such, non-mental.^ In this Alexander is, in our 
opinion, essentially correct, as far as he has gone ; but it con- 
stitutes as much a departure from the essential principles of 
neo-reahsm as do Wolf's theory of hallucination and Russell's 
theory of error. To the American neo-realists, moreover, with 
their rejection of the idea of ''mental activity," Alexander's 
solution of the problem of values would be unthinkable. 

Montague has chosen, as lying between the definite concepts 
of quality and relation, the more ambiguous concept of status: 
value, he says, is the status acquired by any object, existent 
or non-existent, in virtue of its capacity to satisfy an interest. 
An object that has the value-status he calls a value. ^ Now if 
we use the term ''value," as Montague seems to do here, to 
mean simply an independently existing object, viewed as capable 
of satisfying an interest, it becomes possible to hold that this 
"value" exists independently of consciousness, but the triumph 
is merely verbal. No provision is made for answering the 
question as to whether the presence of the valuing consciousness, 
or the existence of the interest, is essential to the object having 
this value-status. If so, a quality (for that is what "status" 
really means) of the object depends upon its relation to some- 

^ Philosophical Review, XX, 1911, p. 162. 

2 Proc. Aristot. Soc, 1909-10, p. 28. 

3 Philosophical Review, XXIII, 1914, p. 185. 



308 THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE 

thing else — another case of internality of relations for the neo- 
reahst to reckon with. If not, however, one would have to 
conclude that all objects have, actually and permanently, all 
the values that they could ever be experienced to have for all 
possible interests and consciousnesses, including many which 
logically contradict and cancel each other. The impossibility of 
escaping this dilemma seems to indicate that Montague has 
not succeeded in solving, for neo-realists, the problem of values. 
Perry has discussed the problem very elaborately. His 
main propositions are that value is the fulfilment of interest ^ 
and that values are neither dependent upon judgments of value 
not independent of desire. ^ Or, drawing this last distinction 
still more finely, value may exist without being known or 
discovered, if, as seems to be the case, there can be a desire 
without its being known to be a desire ; ^ and yet, apart from 
consciousness (as desire, or interest) there can be no value.'* 
These distinctions we would accept as largely valid, although it 
seems necessary, further, to make some distinctions, which Perry 
does not make, in order to gain for the distinctions he does make 
the measure of acceptance they deserve. For instance, are there 
not some values, however insignificant and arbitrary they may 
be, that depend upon explicit awareness, or cognition, for their 
existence? Again, may there not be unconscious teleological 
processes, such as the vital processes, by virtue of which certain 
objects have values which they would not otherwise possess? 
But in any case — and this is the point of special interest here — 
the value appears as a quality produced in an object, known or 
unknown, real or unreal, by a teleological process, whether of 
mere thought, or of mere desire, or of both, or conceivably of 
neither. But this is virtually to agree with Alexander, at least 
to the extent of admitting that some values are the products of 
consciousness, and this seems essentially the same thing as to 
say that they are, to some extent, the products of mental activity. 
Manifestly the ?;aZi^e-producing consciousness is no purely 
external relation. 



1 Journal of Philosophy, XI, 1914, pp. 156-8. 

2 The New Realism, pp. 148-9 ; Present Philosophical Tendencies, p. 332. 

3 The New Realism, p. 141. 

4 Present Philosophical Tendencies, p. 332 ; The New Realism, p. 140. 



NEO-REALISTIC DOCTRINE OF RELATIONS 309 

We are now at the end of our detailed examination of the new 
reahsm, viewed as a theory of knowledge. The result of our 
critique seems to be that, in spite of valuable elements in the 
doctrine, which will be incorporated in our constructive view, 
there is an undue dogmatism with reference to the extent to 
which that which is presented to knowledge is real independently 
of consciousness. The characteristic of dogmatism is frankly 
admitted by Marvin ; ^ but his plea that science is necessarily 
dogmatic does not excuse the extent to which the new philos- 
ophy carries this dogmatism. The physical sciences need to 
assume dogmatically what, as we would undertake to show, 
can be philosophically vindicated ; the new realism asserts a 
larger independent content (at least normal secondary qualities, 
and in some cases all errors and contradictions and all values) 
than is scientifically necessary, or than can be philosophically 
vindicated. Ideally, it is absolute epistemological monism, 
denying any difference between the object as presented and as 
independently real (except that the independent reality includes 
more than is actually presented) , asserting that there is no idea 
but the independent thing itself, that consciousness, as a rela- 
tion, is absolutely external, or that, if it is viewed as a mental 
activity, it produces nothing. Just because it is not absolutely 
dogmatic, but has undertaken to be critical, it has had to con- 
tent itself in every case (even in that of Russell; note his 
admission with reference to error) with affirming something 
less than this ideal ; and reasons have been given in the discus- 
sion for believing that, in spite of this departure from their 
original ideal, what is still affirmed by the neo-realist is con- 
siderably more than is warranted on critical grounds. It may 
very well turn out, however, that what the neo-realists have 
been fundamentally interested in maintaining, viz. the fact 
of immediate awareness of independent reality in normal human 
experience, can be vindicated on adequatelj^ critical grounds. 
It may be that we shall discover that for the experienced object 
and the independently real object to be numerically the same, 
it is not necessary that they be qualitatively, even in normal 
perception, absolutely identical. 

1 "Dogmatism versus Criticism," Journal of Philosophy, IX, 1912, pp. 309- 
17. 



4. CONSTRUCTIVE STATEMENT 

CHAPTER XIV 

Critical Monism in Epistemology 

We have seen reason to reject absolute dualism and an 
idealistic absolute monism in epistemology, as resting upon in- 
correct analyses and fallacious processes of reasoning, with 
their unsatisfactory consequences, against which the former 
theory struggles in vain, while the latter accepts them and tries 
to make the best of a bad situation. On the other hand we 
have not found ourselves able to go all the way with the realistic 
absolute monists, because of their dogmatizing beyond what is 
critically justified or necessary, and also because of the many 
insoluble difficulties into which their doctrine leads them. We 
seem driven therefore to seek another point of view, from which 
we shall be able to avoid the fallacies, the subjectivisms, and 
abstractionisms of idealism in its various forms and the fallacies 
and final agnosticism of dualism, without falling into the un- 
warranted dogmatism and insoluble puzzles of neo-realism. 

The critics of the new realism have scored several points in 
their attack upon the neo-realistic doctrines of illusion, hallu- 
cination, and error, and in their criticisms of the view that 
consciousness is an absolutely external relation. And yet it is 
not so clear, by any means, that any possible theory within the 
limits of the accepted definition of realistic epistemological 
monism has thereby been shown, as one of the most successful 
of these critics has claimed, to be ''inadmissible." ^ What we 
are to defend here might perhaps be called epistemological 
monism and critical realism (critical reahstic epistemological 
monism), as opposed to the epistemological monism and dog- 
matic realism (realistic absolute epistemological monism) 
of the typical neo-realist. By this is meant the doctrine that 
the object perceived is existentially, or numerically, identical 

1 A. O. Lovejoy, Journal of Philosophy, X, 1913, p. 43. 
310 



CRITICAL MONISM IN EPISTEMOLOGY 311 

with the real object at the moment of perception, although 
the real object may have qualities that are not perceived at 
that moment ; and also that this same object may exist when 
unperceived, although not necessarily with all the qualities which 
it possesses when perceived. Other appropriate but simpler 
designations for this position are critical realistic monism, 
critical epistemological monism, and critical monism in episte- 
mology. 

It is important to note at the outset that there is no necessary 
contradiction between Lovejoy's statement ^ that there is 
mediate and yet valid knowledge and Perry's contention ^ that 
there cannot be knowledge at all unless there is immediate 
knowledge of reality. May it not be that there is mediate 
knowledge, because, and only because, there is first immedi- 
ate knowledge? If, as we shall maintain, this much of the neo- 
realist's thesis is defensible, that in ordinary perception there 
is immediate knowledge of reality which is not dependent for 
its existence upon its being perceived, it may also be said, in 
the light of experience, that we often have repeated immediate 
knowledge of repeated, essentially identical, independent pro- 
cesses. Indeed, in countless instances we come to be able to 
predict the later stages of a process of which we have, in this 
particular instance of its occurrence, immediately experienced 
only the beginning. Again, we are often practically certain 
that a process of which we have immediately experienced only 
the beginning and the end has been essentially identical with 
what at other times we have had under our immediate observa- 
tion throughout its entire course. If, then, we define knowledge 
as certainty of the nature of reality, either in its immediate 
givenness or in true judgments,^ sufficient for all proper practical 
purposes, it will be readily apparent that if there is immediate 
knowledge of independent reality in normal perception, there 
may also be mediate knowledge of independent reality through 
the processes of thought, and that the immediate knowledge 
has made the mediate knowledge possible. 

1 Journal of Philosophy, IX, 1912, pp. 681-4 ; X, 1913, pp. 561-72. 

2 lb., VI, 1909, pp. 29 fif., 169 fif. ; VII, 1910, pp. 342-3 ; Present Philosophical 
Tendencies, 1912, pp. 311-13. 

3 For definition of truth, see Ch. XIX, infra. 



312 THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE 

Immediate knowledge of independent reality, then, would 
make mediate knowledge of the same also possible; and it 
does not appear what else could do it. Hence it would seem 
as though, unless realistic epistemological monism can be 
established as a tenable theory, we should have to face the 
dilemma of absolute solipsism or absolute agnosticism. Ideahs- 
tic epistemological monism, at least in any form that avoids 
abstractionism, cannot logically escape solipsism. Realistic 
epistemological dualism cannot logically escape agnosticism. 
Realistic epistemological monism would logically escape both. 
We must therefore raise the question, Is immediate knowledge 
of independent reaHty in perception possible ? 

This question, in the hght of the hypothesis which it shall be 
our present task to develop, we would answer in the affirmative. 
The epistemological dualist maintains that what we perceive 
is existentially and in part qualitatively distinct from the in- 
dependently existing subject ; it is a second object, at best only 
somewhat similar to the first. The typical neo-reahst tries 
to hold that what we perceive is existentially identical with 
the independent reality, and also qualitatively identical, to the 
full extent of the perceptual content; it is not a second and 
perhaps somewhat similar object, but the very same object, 
with no additional qualities due to its being perceived. A 
critical reahstic monism would combine the partial truths of 
both antithetical positions. Bearing in mind that in the self- 
identity, for us, of physical objects at different times and in 
spite of certain changes, there is a subjective factor (our pur- 
pose) and an objective factor (e.g. continuity of physical energy 
and of certain teleological functions other than our own), 
we would maintain with the neo-realist that what we perceive is 
existentially identical with the independent reality, and with the 
epistemological dualist we would say that it has, when being per- 
ceived, certain qualities — notably the sense-qualities — which 
it does not possess when not perceived. 

In order to be able to maintain this position it is simply neces- 
sary to apply to sensation the view of consciousness which 
Bergson applies in his doctrine of memory. In passing from 
perception to memory, according to Bergson, we definitely 
abandon matter for spirit ; memory, importing, as it were, the 



CRITICAL MONISM IN EPISTEMOLOGY 313 

past into the present, bringing into the present experience what 
would not otherwise be there, is a creative activity of spirit.^ 
Bergson's description is too much in terms of psychological 
idealism; memory does not really import the past into the 
present, but creates representational elements in the content 
of the present experience which stand for past sense-elements ; 
but even when thus translated into realistic terms, the con- 
cept of creative activity still remains valid. But what we are 
concerned to maintain here is that in sensation, as truly as in 
memory, there is a creative activity of spirit — or of whatever 
we may choose to call the psychical subject. Upon occasion of 
certain stimulations, sense-qualities — particular colors, sounds, 
odors, tastes, and the like — are creatively produced by each 
psychical subject for itself, and in many cases located with 
more or less accuracy in or upon the very object in the environ- 
ment from which the stimulation proceeded. It is a case of 
coordination of activities, in the first instance those of objects 
of the environment with those of nervous centres involved in the 
not purely passive process of being stimulated, and ultimately 
of such environmental processes as radiation with such psychical 
activities as are involved in the production of the various 
color-qualities of objects. The theory is not identical with 
projectionism and Lotze's "local sign" theory; the sense- 
qualities are not first ''in the mind," or intraorganic, and then 
''projected"; they are created, in each case of sensing, in the 
particular location in which they are found. Sometimes the 
qualities produced are not placed accurately upon the object 
from which the stimulation first proceeded. This is especially 
the case with heavenly bodies, whose visual qualities are placed 
not only in the line of the direction of the rays as they enter the 
eye, but at no very great distance from the observer, just a 
little beyond human reach from the highest trees or buildings 
or mountains. This is doubtless because, in the history of the 
race and the individual, it has worked just as well to have visual 
qualities thus placed, as it would have, had they been more 
accurately located. This extension of the activistic interpre- 
tation of consciousness to sensation as well as to memory and 
the higher thought-processes would at least have the merit of 

1 Matter and Memory, Eng. Tr., pp. 80, 313. 



314 THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE 

getting rid of Bergson's paradoxical identification of pure per- 
ception with matter ; the colors and other components of what 
Bergson calls "images" are not ultimate data, but products of 
subjective activity. It may be objected that such creative 
sense-activity is mysterious, and so it is ; but no philosopher will 
ever succeed in driving mystery out of the processes of life and 
consciousness, or from any other phase of real existence; the 
best we can hope to do is to get the mystery properly cornered, 
correctly located. This mystery of creative psychical activity is 
simply a special instance of the universal mystery of being, and 
especially of becoming. With Walter Pater ^ we may say that 
''color is a spirit upon things, by which they become expressive 
to the spirit"; it is at any rate the created product of spirit, 
if the sensing subject is spirit. 

But it may also be said that we have here what looks Hke a 
solution of the problem of the nature of consciousness. For 
some time, as we have seen, this has been one of the most 
troublesome of our philosophical problems — especially to the 
neo-realists. It had long been a commonplace among philos- 
ophers that the one impregnable foundation for philosophical 
construction was the proposition, '' Consciousness is." But when 
the question was raised. If it is so certain that consciousness is, 
just ivhat is it ? the answer was not readily forthcoming. As has 
been indicated in our study of the new realism, many of the 
recent replies to the question may be viewed as constituting a 
dialectical progress of thought from the concept of consciousness 
as an existent entity, or quality, to the concept of consciousness 
as behavior, or activity. The movement of thought in the 
American neo-realism, however, can scarcely be called a typical 
synthetic dialectic; the earHer thesis is not included in the 
later, but excluded from it. Consciousness cannot be a quality 
of things, it is claimed, because it is not empirically discoverable 
as such ; therefore it must be a relation between objects. But 
since it is so difficult to determine just what relation between 
objects consciousness can be, the suggestion is put forward by 
some that it is a special kind of activity of the body or nervous 
system as subject upon the environment as object. Our 
reasons for rejecting these successive "solutions" of the prob- 

1 Quoted by B. Bosanquet, The Principle of Individimlity and Value, p. 63. 



CRITICAL MONISM IN EPISTEMOLOGY 315 

lem have been set forth above; but in connection with our 
present constructive attempt the general movement toward an 
interpretation of consciousness in terms of activity is significant. 
The movement of thought among the EngUsh neo-reaHsts, 
although it has concerned itself less, perhaps, with the question 
as to the nature of consciousness, than has that of the Ameri- 
can school, has come nearer to a satisfactory solution of the 
problem. They have avoided the handicap of virtually assuming 
that there can be none but physical existences, and the dialecti- 
cal movement discoverable in their thinking has consequently 
been more genuinely synthetic. Consciousness, it is from the 
first maintained, is a quality of the psychical subject, rather 
than of the physical object. But it is soon discovered that 
consciousness cannot be a quality of the subject, unless it is 
also a relation between the subject and the object ; and further, 
that it cannot be a relation between subject and object, unless 
it is at the same time an activity of the subject upon the object. 
Thus far we can agree. But the English realists seem to be at 
a loss when they attempt to state the nature of this activity. 
Moore and Alexander, as we have seen, cover their failure with 
the seemingly unintelligible, because self-contradictory, notion 
of a diaphanous activity, an activity in which, apparently, 
nothing is produced. Wolf is to be credited with having had 
the courage to depart far enough from the beaten track of the 
neo-realists to maintain that, in the case of hallucination and 
illusion, consciousness is a productive activity. But since, 
as has been shown above, in making the sensing process radi- 
cally different, psychologically, in normal and abnormal per- 
ception, in order to explain its different logical value in the two 
cases. Wolf's doctrine runs counter to well-known psychological 
facts, his position is one of unstable equilibrium, and as such, 
untenable. What wx here suggest is that it is possible to inter- 
pret consciousness, in sensation everywhere and always, as well 
as in its other forms, as being a productive activity, and that of a 
unique — but not indefinable — sort. The psychical subject, 
which we may consent with W. McDougall ^ to call once more 
the soul, creatively produces — each individual for itself alone, 
and on condition of certain stimulations — all the various 

1 Body and Mind, 1911, passim. 



316 THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE 

sense-elements which it is able to discover in the surrounding 
world of physical objects. Something like this seems to be 
McDougall's view, although he has not developed it in his 
published works to any great extent. Moreover, he does not 
seem to have discovered a way of combining this activistic in- 
terpretation of consciousness with an epistemologically monistic 
realism. 

Let it not be objected that in making use of the idea of creation 
we are reverting to a discredited concept. It is this idea of 
real productivity which is the original meaning of causahty. 
The real cause is not a mere ''unconditional, invariable ante- 
cedent," which does nothing to anything, but which is mys- 
teriously followed by a mere ''consequent," similarly inert. 
That, as was noted above, is simply what causality would he, 
if a psychological idealism or phenomenalism, of the type held 
by Mill and others, were true. Causation, on the contrary, 
is productive activity.^ The regularly antecedent event merely 
gives a clew to the real cause, although for some practical 
purposes it may be treated as if it were itself the cause. As 
Reid long ago pointed out, it is not the cause, but a "sign" of 
the cause.2 The cause is something which does something to 
something else, and what it does, "the difference it makes,'^ 
what it creatively produces, is the effect. This whole point of 
view, applied, as has here been done, to the psychical causes, 
may be called activistic realism. 

This conception of consciousness as a unique productive or 
creative activity of a non-physical subject (an activity further 
definable in terms of its products) is by no means so strange to 
philosophical ways of thinking as some might be led by recent 

^ A correspondent, referring to the view presented in this chapter, writes : 
"Your theory. . . meets the facts, solves the puzzles — those of an empirical 
order. Your hypothesis would do everything — so it strikes me on a first reading. 
It is as to the admissibility of the hypothesis that my difficulties arise." He 
then goes on to suggest that the hypothesis be criticised from the Humian point 
of view. Now I would readily admit that, from the point of view of the Humian 
or any other thoroughgoing phenomenahsm, the hypothesis of creative causality 
is inadmissible. But what if all such pure phenomenalism is itself unnecessary, 
essentially fallacious, and therefore inadmissible ? Indeed, if it were true that 
only from another point of view could an hypothesis be framed which would 
"meet the facts, solve the puzzles," would not this circumstance in itself be very 
good evidence of the essential correctness of that other point of view ? 

2 Collected Writings, p. 122a. 



CRITICAL MONISM IN EPISTEMOLOGY 317 

discussions to imagine. The idea of teleological and quasi- 
teleological united with efficient causahty has been famiUar 
ever since Aristotle promulgated his doctrine of "entelechy," 
and recently it has been impressively set forth by Driesch and 
other vitalists, as well as by Bergson. The earlier attempts of 
such philosophers as Schelling and Fechner to construe the 
universe ultimately in terms of organism rather than mechanism 
point in the same general direction. Indeed, it is worth noting 
that opposite aspects of activistic realism one-sidedly developed, 
are even to be found on the one hand in Locke's doctrine of the 
activity in sensation of external things only, and on the other 
hand in Leibniz's doctrine of force acting only immanently. 
The synthetic activity of thought was not only sufficiently 
emphasized, but given a somewhat mistaken and exaggerated 
application by Kant, and still more by his neo-Kantian succes- 
sors, T. H. Green, H. Cohen, Howison, and others. In the 
systems of Fichte, Herbart, Schopenhauer, and Lotze, not to 
mention Hegel, the concept of psychical activity figures variously, 
but in all cases largely. The reconstructive function exercised 
by means of ideas in judgment has been rather more than ade- 
quately emphasized by Dewey and his followers. In psychology 
vindications of the reality of interaction (Ladd, McDougall) 
and of mental activity (Wundt, Paulhan,^ Angell) have a large 
and respectable place. Woodworth's new theory of " perceptual 
reaction " also has some very important points of contact with 
the view advocated here, and it would almost seem as if his 
next step might well be the adoption of an activistic interpre- 
tation of sensation. 2 Moreover, the concept of creation 
has been reintroduced into philosophy by Renouvier, while es- 
sentially activistic interpretations of ''free will" have been ably 
defended in recent years by William James, Eucken, Boyce 
Gibson, F. C. S. Schiller, Boutroux, and Bergson. Indeed even 
Ostwald's ''energetics," while not in itself an expression of ac- 
tivistic philosophy, in its interpretation of the ultimate nature of 
matter brings important grist to the activistic mill. 

The argument for an activistic view derivable from human 
freedom is worth elaborating. It is a very real motive for 

^ L'adivite mentale et les elements de V esprit, 2d ed., 1913. 

* Psychological Review, XXII, 1915, pp. 1-27. See p. 272, supra. 



318 THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE 

adopting the category of creative causality, and one, we would 
contend, which is not without logical value in a final synthesis, 
that without the employment of this category every act of 
man's life would have to be traced back indefinitely beyond 
the beginning of that hfe for every factor in its causal explana- 
tion. The man himself could not be regarded as the ultimate 
cause of anything; and so he would be logically justified in 
repudiating all responsibility for his acts. But in view of our 
intuitive and practical certainty that we are not morally justi- 
fied in repudiating all moral responsibility, we must adhere to 
its logical implicate, viz. some measure of ultimate origination 
on man's part. But if it has been rendered practically certain 
that there is such a process as creative activity, it does not 
necessarily involve a violation of the principle of parsimony to 
suppose that it is present in certain other processes also. In- 
deed, in varying degrees and forms may it not be present in 
every instance of becoming? 

The activistic view of consciousness has the further merit 
of furnishing the solution of several old puzzles. For instance, 
it enables us to define psychology, giving to it a subject-matter 
distinct from that of any other science. Psychology is the 
science which undertakes to study the psychical subject (soul, 
or mind) in the light of what it does. It is descriptive of 
psychical activities. It is not concerned with the sensible 
qualities of objects, as such, but with sense-quaHties simply 
as products of psychical activity. But, besides sensing, it under- 
takes to describe apperceiving, remembering, imagining, con- 
ceiving, judging, reasoning, feeling, wilhng — in short, all the 
activities of the psychical subject. Even the troublesome prob- 
lem as to the "subconscious" becomes, from this point of 
view, a httle less troublesome. It is at least conceivable that 
there should be genuinely psychical activities, of which the 
products are at first dissociated so completely from the prod- 
ucts of other and possibly simultaneous psychical activities, 
that the subject may not be, in these latter activities, aware 
of the former, or of their products ; and also that when some of 
the later after-effects of these "subconscious" activities should 
come to be associated with the contents of the ordinary "stream 
of consciousness," it may be without any memory of the 



CRITICAL MONISM IN EPISTEMOLOGY 319 

earlier activities of which they are the consequence. Psy- 
chology thus becomes — "pace William James and the now old 
''new psychology" — the science of the soul. It studies the 
psychical subject not apart from, but in, its activities, and these 
in the complex of their products (sense-qualities, ideas, bodily 
movements, etc.). 

The reason why sensing has been so uniformly omitted from the 
recognized list of psychical activities is probably that it is rela- 
tively static, as compared with the various "thinking" activities. 
Sensing is to other psychical activities as the motion of the earth 
is to the motions of objects on or near the surface of the earth. 
For ordinary purposes it is not necessary to attend to the mo- 
tion of the earth, or to the psychical activity of sensing ; with the 
result that we ordinarily take them as static. In the light of 
this one easily understands how it is that G. E. Moore, although 
in his paper on "The Subject-Matter of Psychology" ^ he moved 
a certain distance in this direction, was prevented from reaching 
a unitary point of view, according to which "acts of conscious- 
ness" may be viewed as constituting the entire subject-matter of 
psychology. He was prevented from attaining to this result by 
his rejection of the idea that the psychical subject can give 
properties to things.^ 

It is very much the point of view advocated here, however, 
that we find expressed toward the end of McDougall's Body 
and Mind.^ It is true that in his later work. Psychology, the 
Study of Behavior, he advocates an extension of the signification 
of psychology, such as would make it include not only the study 
of these psychical activities, but also the correlated processes of 
physiological "behavior." Angell, among other reasonably 
conservative psychologists, inclines to a similar view. But this 
is no violation of what we have set forth as the nature of psy- 
chology in the strict sense of the term. For various good and 
sufficient practical reasons it may have become expedient to use 
the term " psychology " to include, besides psychology in the 
proper and narrower sense of the term, the scientific study of 
the "behavior" of organisms. 

1 Proc. Aristot. Soc, 1909-10, pp. 36-62. 

2 76., 1903-4, p. 135. 

» Pp. 364-5, quoted in Ch. XII, supra. 



320 THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE 

But the theory of consciousness which we have advanced 
must be judged very largely by its serviceabiUty in clearing up 
the philosophical puzzles that have been associated with such 
phenomena as after-images, hallucination, illusion, color- 
blindness, etc. Positive after-images are creatively produced 
on occasion of the continuation, for a brief period after the 
extra-organic stimulation has ceased, of the same sort of intra- 
organic stimulation as was dominated by the extra-organic 
stimulus. Negative after-images are creatively produced on 
occasion of the stimulation from certain areas in the sense-organ 
(which are coordinated with those stimulated extra-organically) 
finally becoming stronger than that continuing to come from the 
relatively exhausted areas originally stimulated. The effects 
of color-contrast are quahties of the object creatively produced 
by the psychical subject, on occasion of the spreading of stimu- 
lation from the physiological units originally active to others, 
presumably either in their proximity, or with which these partic- 
ular psychical activities are coordinated, or both. Dewey's 
reconstruction of the ''reflex arc" concept^ is carried still 
further. There is a coordination, successively, of a series of 
pairs of coordinated physiological and psychical activities. In 
some of these pairs the physiological is more prominent; in 
others, the psychical. The simultaneous coordination vindi- 
cates the partial truth of paralleHsm; but the coordination, 
both simultaneous and successive, is explained only by the 
hypothesis of interaction, at least originally, not between the 
coordinated events, but in all cases between relatively inde- 
pendent beings, physical and psychical, some of which are beings 
within other beings (e.g. organisms). The phenomenon of 
color-blindness is due to a lack of inheritance of the capacity 
for certain psychical activities. This incapacity, of course, is 
physiologically conditioned. In short, the whole process of 
sensing, i.e. of creatively producing certain sense-qualities in 
objects of the environment on occasion of certain kinds of stimu- 
lation, is to be viewed as the inherited result of what was first 
achieved in the lower animals from which the human race has 
ascended. Moreover, this consideration throws some Ught 

1 "The Reflex Arc Concept in Psychology," Psychological Review, Vol. Ill, 
1896, pp. 357 ff. 



CRITICAL MONISM IN EPISTEMOLOGY 321 

upon the otherwise puzzHng question as to whether the colors 
seen by two apparently normal individuals are qualitatively 
identical, or whether they are qualitatively different, with 
corresponding differences, simply. Since both individuals 
inherit their sensing capacity from a common ancestry, it is 
entirely probable that its products are qualitatively the same, 
except where there has been a failure to inherit, as with the 
color-blind. A further sidelight upon our theory, and support 
of it, may be derived from paleontology. It is a well-known 
fact that the brilliantly colored — or shall we say colorable? — • 
flowering plants did not appear — and many extant species 
would not have survived if they had appeared — before there 
were animal forms, such as insects, to be stimulated by their 
selective reflection of light, and so to clothe them — according 
to our theory — with gay colors, by means of which they might 
be guided to them, sustain themselves with their honey, and 
incidentally assist in their pollination. Color in the flowers 
without the presence of any honey-seeking animal form would 
have had no biological function that we can discover, and there 
seems no scientific ground to suppose it existed. Assuming a 
color-producing capacity on the part of the honey-eating insect, 
however, we can account for the survival of both the animal 
and the plant. Hence the principle of parsimony would seem 
to favor, however slightly, the latter hypothesis. 

Hallucination is readily explained as the creation of certain 
sense-quahties, and ordinarily their being placed in real space, 
on occasion of a stimulation, similar or practically identical, 
so far as the last stage of its m^ra-organic history is concerned, 
with the ordinary stimulation, but not proceeding from the usual 
6a;^ra-organic cause. The color, or other sense-quality, is, in 
such cases, put upon the usual cause, as might be expected, for 
it is with the action of this cause that that particular sensing 
activity is habitually coordinated. Illusion, being partial 
hallucination, is similarly explicable. The illusory elements 
and haUucinatory objects, although really existent and, if 
spatial at all, located in real space, are existences created by 
the iadividual sensing subject for itself alone, as is the case with 
sense-qualities in general, and so are not independently real. 
Usually hallucination and illusion are not regarded as ''error," 

Y 



322 THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE 

unless they are later discovered to have interfered with some of 
the purposes of the subject. 

According to our theory there is also an explanation of the 
fact that in dreams, as compared with normal perception, the 
sense-qualities are less prominent than the size and shape and 
other '' primary qualities." A correspondent testifies that in 
his experience color is never given in dreams, although his sight 
is exceptionally sensitive to color. In this case it is simply 
necessary to remember what has been pointed out so clearly by 
Bergson in his recent discussion of dreams,^ viz. that dreaming 
is the result of the union of memory products with those sub- 
dued "sensations'^ which persist during sleep, such as the idio- 
retinal light ; the relative absence of color in dreams being then 
explained by the absence of very distinct and permanent colors 
in the visual field when the eyes are closed, as compared with 
the colors produced under the stimulus of the rays of light which 
enter the wide-open eyes of the subject when awake. 

The further exposition of epistemological monism and critical 
reahsm leads us to speak more definitely of the distinction be- 
tween 'primary and secondary qualities. In the light of scientific 
progress Locke's fist of the primary quahties of physical objects 
(the qualities which they must be thought of as possessing in- 
dependently of the incident of their entering into the relation 
of being sensed and perceived) needs revision ; but it is in con- 
nection with the production of secondary or sense-qualities that 
the sharpest deviation from the Lockian philosophy is necessary. 
Sense-qualities are not produced by external things and lodged 
in an essentially passive mental receptacle, as Locke thought; 
neither are they, as Lotze maintained, first produced within an 
inner field of consciousness and then ''projected" into outer 
space, with the aid of "local signs"; they are creatively pro- 
duced, by the activity of the subject, in things or in the individ- 
ual's own body, just where they are experienced as being. 
The mind does not passively receive impressions, but, as we shall 
see, it actively takes impressions of surrounding objects by means 
of sensation and thought. Sense-qualities are private marks, 
the production of which was learned by the animal race, as we 
shall see more clearly later, in a sort of involuntary trial-and- 

1 The Independent, New York, Oct. 23 and 30, 1913. 



CRITICAL MONISM IN EPISTEMOLOGY 323 

error process; this capacity has been transmitted to the indi- 
vidual, so that by a series of inherited and involuntary, but 
creative, psychical acts, he is able to clothe environing objects 
with their various sense-qualities. The result is that a more 
favorable adjustment to the situation than could have existed 
without it is made possible, and so the sensing capacity proves 
to have a very decisive survival-value in the struggle for 
existence. 

A special class of sense-qualities is made up of the feeling and 
emotion qualities which are creatively produced, and more 
or less vaguely located throughout the body, on occasion, 
as Dewey has pointed out,^ of the return stimulation due to 
partial inhibition of motor impulses. In the beginning it is 
most imperative, biologically, that aversion-producing feelings, 
such as various "sensations" of pain and the general feeling 
of discomfort, should be the ones produced ; and it is quite 
evident that such must have been the case with animals that have 
survived for any considerable length of time. But this does not 
necessarily lead to the pessimistic inference drawn by Schopen- 
hauer. If the natural history of feeling were written, it would 
of course appear that with successful adjustment to the en- 
vironment stimulus to painful feelings would cease to be active. 
With the cessation of the pain, accordingly, some sort of "sense 
of rehef " would naturally and even necessarily be produced to 
register for the organism the changed situation. But it is not 
necessary to suppose, with Schopenhauer, that this "sense of 
relief," creatively produced, as we would say, by the psychical 
subject, must always be purely negative. The victory over dis- 
turbing conditions may be signalized by the creation of sense- 
or feeling-qualities so decidedly pleasant as to more than 
counterbalance the pain necessarily produced in the previous 
situation, so that it is by no means necessary to suppose the 
sum of pains to be greater than the sum of pleasures. 

The secondary qualities are created, then, and thereby the 
primary qualities are revealed. Through being clothed with the 
secondary qualities of sense, material things with their primary 
quahties, their spatial and temporal location, their comparative 
extension in space and duration in time, and the quantity, dis- 

^ " The Significance of Emotions," Psychological Review, Vol. II, 1896, pp. 13 ff. 



324 THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE 

tribution, and transformation of their energy, are made available 
for human knowledge. If it be objected that there is always 
more or less of temporal and spatial dislocation between the 
independently real object of the environment and what is im- 
mediately sensed, that at best what is revealed is the indepen- 
dent object where it was and as it was when the process which has 
acted as a stimulus started from it, we must admit that this is 
true. But it remains to be seen whether this destroys the knowl- 
edge-value of sense-experience with reference to independent 
reality. There are two different sorts of cases, viz. those in 
which the object is at a short distance only from the observer, 
and those in which it is at a very great distance. In the former 
case, where an object has been observed at rest in any particular 
location and in any particular condition for any considerable 
length of time, we can be certain that with the exception of 
a small fraction of the last second, it has really been where it 
still seems to be; and where objects are moving or changing, 
the slight degree of illusion ordinarily present can generally be 
allowed for and practically counteracted by thought — which 
assumes, however, that it is very commonly possible to perceive 
things where and as they are. It is a further consideration in 
favor of this assumption in the case of objects in close proximity 
to the observer that what we mean by the present in practical 
life has a time span, so that in observing what and where a not 
very distant and not very rapidly changing object was a very 
small fraction of a second ago, we are observing what and where 
it is now, — in the ordinary sense of that word. The case of 
very distant objects is somewhat different. Here, as has 
been intimated before, the sense-qualities are placed upon sub- 
stitute objects, or in substitute locations, which, by reason of 
their practically equal inaccessibility to touch, for example, 
may represent the more distant real objects well enough for 
ordinary practical purposes. Here too, then, practically speak- 
ing, by means of secondary qualities created, primary qualities 
are revealed. 

The distinction between primary and secondary qualities is 
attacked, of course, from both sides. Extreme realists ask why 
psychical creativity should be extended so far as to include 
sense-qualities, while extreme idealists ask why it should not 



CRITICAL MONISM IN EPISTEMOLOGY 325 

be extended further, so as to include primary qualities as well. 
To the former question it is to be rephed in the first place that 
while there must be something objective prior to perception 
to start the stimulation which is the precondition of perception, 
this does not necessarily mean the prior existence of all or any 
of the secondary qualities. Furthermore, in science — which is, 
in principle, simply common sense become sufficiently critical 
for the more specialized purposes which man has recently de- 
veloped — there is no need whatever to assume the independent 
existence of the sense-quaHties, while the independent existence 
of the primary qualities is necessary for a rational explanation 
of the causation of the contents of sense-experience. On the 
other hand, again, the permanent, independent reality of all 
sense-qualities permanently perceivable by different persons 
in the same object seems inconceivable, because in many cases 
these are mutually contradictory and exclusive. An unbearable 
burden of proof evidently rests upon him who would affirm 
that what science does not need to assert, and what leads one into 
contradictory statements about external reality, is nevertheless 
true. 

With reference to the idealistic question as to why human 
psj^chical creativity should not be viewed as furnishing the 
explanation of primary qualities, as well as secondary, it may 
be remarked, to begin with, that this conclusion is to be avoided, 
if logically possible, if we have any interest at all in objectivity 
of knowledge, as opposed to agnosticism with reference to the 
reality which stimulates our sensing activities. What it is of 
special importance for epistemological theory to be able to 
maintain is that sense-qualities are located not only in the body 
of the subject, but also often in external objects, so that some 
of the primary qualities, such as shape, relative size, location, 
are as directly present to the subject as are the secondary 
qualities themselves. In opposition to this view it has been 
common, ever since the time of Berkeley, to object that such 
supposedly primary qualities as shape are dependent upon the 
kind of sense-organs we happen to possess ; that if the lenses in 
our eyes were cylindrical, for instance, we should see objects 
as very different in shape from what they are in our present 
experience. To this the answer is that if our eyes were provided 



326 THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE 

with non-symmetrical lenses we should be able to detect the 
illusion, and might perhaps even learn to ignore it, as we do 
the double imagery in all parts except the centre of the field of 
vision. In the perception, under the other conditions supposed, 
of what we now see as a square object, for instance, we could 
easily correct the illusion, in any one of several ways. We 
could do it either by using the hand to measure the length of 
its sides, and seeing that the hand, which would be felt to remain 
the same, varied in visual appearance as did the square; or 
by turning the object through ninety degrees and back again, 
and reflecting, from our experience with the parts of our own 
body as sensed in touch, that the mere turning of a soHd object 
does not alter its real shape ; or by dropping one's head to one 
side through an angle of ninety degrees, and finding the appear- 
ance of the object to change when nothing has been done to it, 
but only something to the body of the subject. And when it is 
inferred from the changing aspects presented by the primary 
qualities of objects in various perspectives, that there is no one 
shape or size or location that is more real than any other, that 
all are alike subjective appearance only, we would still contend 
that it is easily possible to vindicate the truth of the achieve- 
ment of common-sense knowledge, that no object can have 
at any instant more than one real shape or size or location; 
or during any period of time more than one real series of motions 
or changes ; or any change whatever, save as it is produced by 
energetic causes. The real object does not change its shape 
when we change our perspective. All the objective change 
resulting is in the shape of the projection of the object on a 
plane perpendicular to the line of our vision ; and we soon learn 
to perceive an object as square, for instance, even when this 
projection may not be absolutely square. 

We would still maintain, therefore, that through the creation 
of secondary qualities and their location in the body or on other 
independently real objects of the physical world, its environ- 
ment, certain primary qualities of these objects are immediately 
revealed, thus making it possible to hold to realistic epistemo- 
logical monism and to avoid absolute agnosticism. Primary 
qualities are transcendently real ; but some of them are some- 
times empirically real, and this circumstance makes all the dif- 



CRITICAL MONISM IN EPISTEMOLOGY 327 

ference between helpless total ignorance of reality and knowledge 
capable of almost unlimited progress. The thin g-in-it self is 
knowable in part : we are practically certain that things exist 
with their primary qualities, even when they are not known by 
any human subject. The question of the possibility of knowl- 
edge of the thing-in-itself is the question of finding in the thing 
qualities with reference to which the relation of being either 
perceived or thought of is external. By thing-in-itself is meant 
here not the thing as it is when not in any relations whatsoever ; 
that, of course, is an Unding. By thing-in-itself we simply mean 
the thing as it is when neither perceived nor thought of by 
any human being, or even, as we may surmise, the thing as it 
is, essentially unaffected by any mere perception or mere thought, 
whether human or infrahuman or superhuman. Existence 
outside of all relations and existence without dependence upon 
being the object of perception or thought can be identified only 
on the assumption that all relations are the work of thought. 
What we maintain is that it is not necessary to assume this. 

If, finally, any one should be inclined to quibble over the 
question as to whether, even on our theory as thus presented, 
any primary qualities are immediately known, since it would 
always be by means of secondary qualities, the reply is that the 
perception of these primary qualities is practically, i.e. for all 
proper practical purposes — and therefore, as we shall see, 
truly — immediate : it is clearly distinguishable from knowledge 
of qualities not thus present, such as may be gained through 
memory or inference. It would be equally possible, if one were 
inclined to quibble, to maintain that secondary or sense- 
quahties are known only by means of primary qualities, since 
their existence is made possible only through the presence of 
primary qualities of something; or, again, that neither primary 
nor secondary qualities are immediately perceived, since they 
are perceived by means of psychical activity. 

For the sake of completeness at this point it may be said 
further that the qualities of physical objects are not exhaustively 
classified as primary and secondary; there are what may be 
called tertiary qualities also. Primary qualities are those 
qualities of physical objects which are discovered through sense- 
activity, but not produced by it. Secondary qualities are dis- 



328 THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE 

covered in the object only because produced and put there by 
the subject of sense-activity. By tertiary quahties we mean 
such quahties as neither exist in the thing prior to the psychical 
activity of the subject nor are the inimediate product of sense- 
activity; they are placed in the object, not by sense, but by 
purposive, though purely psychical, activity of the subject. Or, 
more briefly, primary qualities are found by sense and thought ; 
secondary qualities are made by sense and found by thought ; 
tertiary qualities are made by thought. It must not be sup- 
posed, however, when thought influences sense-qualities through 
a series of physiological changes, as when it increases or di- 
minishes pain, that the resulting sense-quality is a tertiary 
quality. 

Corresponding to these primary, secondary, and tertiary 
qualities, there are primary, secondary, and tertiary relations. 
Primary relations are such as are independent of their being 
sensed ; secondary relations would be such as exist only in and 
through their being sensed, or felt; and tertiary relations 
would be such as are first established by the thought that thinks 
them, and for the purpose which that thought serves. 

It may be well to refer here to values also, for while most 
if not all tertiary qualities may be regarded as values, it by no 
means follows that all values are tertiary qualities. A value 
is a quality which any object has by virtue of its relation to 
a teleological or quasi-teleological process. Negative values 
are qualities possessed by objects by virtue of their being 
obstacles to the processes in question ; positive values attach to 
objects by virtue of their being either ends or means. Primary 
values are such as obtain independently of consciousness; 
secondary values are dependent upon feeling consciousness, 
but independent of mere thought ; tertiary values are dependent 
upon thought alone. But there is an ambiguity here which 
may be misleading, for what is simply a secondary or even a 
tertiary value so far as a community is concerned becomes a 
primary value to the smaller included community or to the 
included individual. Moreover, in the case of individual values, 
it is sometimes difficult to distinguish secondary from tertiary 
values. When through contemplation an object is idealized,^ it 

1 Cf . J. A. Stewart, Plato's Doctrine of Ideas, Pt. II, pp. 139-40, et passim. 



CRITICAL MONISM IN EPISTEMOLOGY 329 

is not always easy to say how much of its value for the individual 
is felt, and how much is merely posited by thought ; and indeed 
certain values may pass back and forth from the one to the other. 

It may be felt by some that in reverting to the distinction 
between primary and secondary qualities we are adopting a 
view so commonplace as to be thereby discredited. But sense- 
perception is itself very commonplace, and it need not be very 
surprising if the solution of some of its problems should turn out 
to be somewhat commonplace too. Indeed it would be rather 
disheartening if much of the truth about the common things 
with which philosophy deals should not be found to wear the 
garb of common life. It is to be questioned whether there is 
not something not quite wholesome in the tendency to put a 
premium upon novelty in philosophy. May it not possibly be 
to the credit of the view presented, rather than the reverse, 
that it is heretical from the point of view of the philosophies 
of the day, in that it keeps closer than most of them do to the 
conservative, critical revision of common sense which is charac- 
teristic of scientific ways of thinking. 

But, to return to our immediate topic, it is to be noted that 
the distinction between tertiary qualities and ideas of primary 
qualities is especially important. Objects are complexes of 
primary, secondary, and tertiary qualities (including values) 
and relations, and not of ideas of these. There are not different 
"degrees of reality'' ; whatever is real at all is as real as anything 
can be, although there are many kinds of reality, and reality in 
and dependent upon many different relations; and although, 
also, what is real in one relation, e.g. what one dreams, is unreal 
in another. But while an idea in its psychical relations is as 
real as anything else, a logical idea, as such, is not a reality at 
all, but an abstraction from reality. It is not an object but a 
representation, a proxy re-presentation of an object, or of some 
quality of an object, or of some relation between objects or 
relations, functioning vicariously for the presence, the actual 
presentation, of the object or quality or relation in question. 
Ideation, the production of these ideas, is a creative psychical 
activity. In attentive analysis of the presented object, thought- 
elements are brought into association with the qualities of the 
object, and thus the way is prepared for the production, when 



330 THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE 

the object is no longer immediately present, of ideas or repre- 
sentations of the object, or of some of its qualities, either primary 
or secondary or tertiary. Now it may happen on a later occa- 
sion, when the same object is again sensed and thus presented, 
that some of these ideas of qualities may function instead of 
the actual presentation of those qualities. In so far as this is 
the case, the psychical activity is apperception. Now this 
apperceptive activity may, in familiar situations, very largely 
anticipate attentive analysis, thus rendering it unnecessary; 
it makes possible an economy of sensing or of analytic attention. 

At this point there begin to emerge problems the adequate 
consideration of which would carry us far beyond the limits of a 
merely constructive statement, and yet a solution of which is 
essential to an adequate treatment of the problem of knowledge. 
In the first place, perception is the only cognitive mode with 
which we have been particularly concerned ; but when we begin 
to consider the function of ideas and the possibilities of their 
manipulation, the question arises as to whether, even granted 
that there is genuine cognition in perception, all modes of cogni- 
tion are to be thought of as essentially or fundamentally per- 
ceptual, or whether there may not also be some altogether 
different way of knowing reality. This topic must be dealt with 
in a separate chapter.^ 

But besides the question as to whether there may not be some 
way of knowing reality independently of perception, there is a 
far-reaching consideration which would raise a serious problem 
as to whether '' perception" itself can be genuinely cognitive 
after all. In view of the doctrine that certain absolutely a priori 
forms are necessarily involved in perception, and that these 
a priori forms are what determine the form, i.e. the ''primary 
qualities" of objects perceived (or of "phenomena"), rather than 
the qualities of any independently existing object, it becomes 
necessary, in order to defend the validity of perceptual knowl- 
edge, to raise definitely the question of the genesis of these funda- 
mental forms of what we have supposed to be real cognition, 
and, in particular, the question of their genetic relation to what- 
ever independent reality may be supposed to exist. This in- 
vestigation also will require a separate chapter.^ 

i Ch. XV. 2 Ch. XVI. 



CRITICAL MONISM IN EPISTEMOLOGY 331 

But even supposing these questions satisfactorily answered — 
supposing it shown that all cognition is ultimately essentially 
perceptual, and that perception is genuinely cognitive — it 
would remain a fact that there is the difference to whi^h we have 
found it necessary to refer, between what might be regarded as 
presentation and what would have to be viewed as representa- 
tion; explicit ideas are indispensable, and the judgments in 
which they are employed as predicates claim to embody true 
knowledge. We shall therefore have to investigate the problem 
of truth, ^ and, finally, the problem as to how one must pro- 
ceed in order to produce not only j udgments that shall be true, 
but also, in a way that shall be universally valid, an adequate 
certainty of this truth, — in other words, the problem of proof .^ 

In the meantime, however, assuming that critical realistic 
epistemological monism, which has thus far succeeded where 
all other epistemological theories have failed, will be shown 
able to endure all these further tests, we may proceed to make 
explicit some of the further implications of this theory which we 
have been endeavoring to expound and defend. One of the 
things most characteristic of it — and this will become increas- 
ingly manifest as we proceed to the later investigations to which 
we have alluded — is its consistent opposition to the long reg- 
nant Kantian doctrine. At the present stage of our discussion, 
in addition to the way in which in general our theory avoids 
and would expose, as unnecessary, the extreme dualism and con- 
sequent agnosticism of the Kantian doctrine (and that without 
falling into the extreme one-sidedness of either the traditional 
idealisms or the new realism), some minor contrasts may be 
pointed out. Our theory is the opposite of Kant's in that it 
regards the primary qualities and relations of the object not as 
the contribution of the subject, the product of its relating activ- 
ity, but as furnished from the objective side; while the sec- 
ondary quaHties are regarded, not, with Kant, as the contribu- 
tion of the object, or, better, of the supposedly unknowable 
thing-in -itself, but as the contribution of the sense-activity of 
the psychical subject. Because he made the properly primary 
qualities of his merely phenomenal and not independently 
real object subjective, and the secondary qualities relatively 

1 Chs. XVII to XIX, infra. 2 Ch. XX, infra. 



332 THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE 

objective, Kant foredoomed himself to permanent imprison- 
ment within the walls of agnostic dualism. In view of what we 
have said and have yet to say in exposition and defence of the 
view that the primary qualities of objects perceived have also 
independent objective existence, and that their secondary or 
sense-qualities are relatively subjective, we are able to maintain 
that a genuine cognitive acquaintance with independent reality 
is not only possible, but actual, in normal perceptual experience. 

Moreover, from our point of view, analytic judgment becomes 
relatively more important than in the Kantian system. Analy- 
sis is not of ideas, simply, or of previous mental constructs, 
but of preexistent and independently existent realities. And 
analytic judgments, just because they are thus directed toward 
things and not toward mere ideas, are productive of new informa- 
tion. Synthetic judgments, on the other hand, are constructive 
of ideas primarily, not of the objects of perception. The only 
judgments which are constructive of things — except as prod- 
ucts of thought are, as such, regarded as (psychical) things — 
are those comparatively unimportant judgments through which 
there are added to objects their comparatively unimportant 
tertiary qualities. 

Finally, it may be noted that with the solution, here given, 
of the fundamental problem of epistemology (as well as of 
metaphysical psychology) the way is opened up for the solu- 
tion of what we have seen to be the same problem in its most 
generalized form, viz. the problem as to the internality or 
externality of relations. We have found that what the object 
is depends largely upon whether it is sensed or not ; many of 
its qualities thus depend upon its relation to the conscious 
subject. But these qualities may, for some particular purpose, 
be of no importance whatever, and in such a case the knowledge- 
relation is external to the object. Generally speaking, the 
knowledge-relation, when a relation of present consciousness, 
is internal so far as the subject is concerned, and external so 
far as the object is concerned. That is, for most purposes one 
may ignore the difference made in the object by its being known 
and thought of by one's self or others, whereas knowledge is 
not likely to be sought, or even recalled to mind, unless there is 
felt to be some practical difference between the subject with and 



CRITICAL MONISM IN EPISTEMOLOGY 333 

the subject without the knowledge in question. When the 
knowledge-relation is not, however, at the same time a relation 
of present consciousness, for most purposes it makes no differ- 
ence to either subject or object ; it is an external relation. But, 
on the other hand, there is probably no actual relation which 
might not become important for some conceivable purpose, in 
which case it would become internal to one or more of the terms 
related. Whether relations are to be regarded as internal or 
external to the terms related thus depends upon the purpose with 
reference to which the question is raised. Theoretically there 
is no relation which may not be either internal or external. 
The existence of relations does not commonly depend upon 
purpose — it does so, directly, only in the case of tertiary rela- 
tions — but the internahty or externality of those relations does 
depend upon purpose. In any particular situation, for the pres- 
ent explicit purpose or purposes of the subject most of the ob- 
ject's actual relations are external. The doctrine that all re- 
lations are always internal to all the terms related could be 
maintained only by establishing the existence of a knowing-will- 
ing subject for which all conceivable purposes — even the most 
trivial and the most mutually contradictory — were always 
being purposed and never reaching fulfilment. But no such 
''mad Absolute'' can be rationally supposed to exist; and so 
there must, from any actual point of view, be some external 
relations. Second in importance, therefore, to our extension 
of the conception of creative psychical activity to sensation, as a 
device for showing the rational possibility of a sufficiently critical 
epistemology which shall combine realism with epistemological 
monism, we would place a more than ordinary dependence upon 
considerations of purpose in the attempted solution of philo- 
sophical problems in general, and of the problems of epistemology 
in particular. 

In bringing to a close this division of our subject, may we be 
permitted to indulge in some reflections on the status of epis- 
temology in general ? For more than a hundred years now the 
probl/gm of knowledge has been the uppermost problem of philos- 
ophy ; and for those who incline to idealistic ways of thinking, 
it has come to be regarded as the necessary preliminary, if not 
to all the sciences, at least to metaphysics. The neo-realists, 



334 THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE 

on the other hand, tend to discount the importance of episte- 
mology and even the reahty of the problem ; although all the 
while their own philosophical discussions are mainly episte- 
mological. May it not be that the truth they have perhaps 
but dimly apprehended is that the solution of a problem ought 
ordinarily to mean the disappearance of that problem, and 
that the ideaUsts, on the other hand, have made the mistake of 
supposing that the problem as to the possibility of knowledge 
(which, in that form of it with which we have been made most 
familiar, arose incidentally out of fallacious reasoning and 
the resulting unnecessary confusion of thought) must be per- 
manently made the propaedeutic to all other philosophical 
problems — a mistake which is principally responsible for the 
fact that for some generations epistemology has been made 
the cockpit of philosophers? The method of idealistic episte- 
mology is like that of the quack physician ; it first administers a 
drug which makes the patient's ailment chronic, thus making 
its own further services seem permanently indispensable. 
The scientific epistemology which we would recommend pre- 
scribes a natural regimen for the sceptic, including exercise; 
it would help the philosophical novice through a crisis incidental 
to the development of his system of thought, and thus soon 
makes its further services unnecessary. 

We would make the statement, then, even if somewhat ten- 
tatively in view of the further problems to be considered, 
still with considerable confidence in view of the fatal objections 
that we have found ourselves compelled to urge against absolute 
epistemological duaHsm and against absolute epistemological 
monism, whether idealistic or realistic, that a tenable and the 
only tenable position with reference to the epistemological 
problem is that which we have designated a critical epistemologi- 
cal monism, or, more explicitly, critical reahstic epistemological 
monism. It regards the achievements of practical knowledge 
as foundations for further advances. It defines knowledge 
so as to make it include something which we already had before 
we began to philosophize. Its results are therefore not offered 
as the first knowledge, but as a vindication of previous knowl- 
edge. To reject it is to choose fallacy, or agnosticism; to go 
beyond it is to dogmatize overmuch. It is not offered as a 



CRITICAL MONISM IN EPISTEMOLOGY 335 

finished demonstration, but as the most reasonable hypothesis 
in view of all the facts, and as continuing the practical certainty 
characteristic of the point of view of common sense and common 
science. If, then, critical monism is indeed the solution of the 
philosophical problem of knowledge, the thinker ought to find 
himself able to proceed with his metaphysical tasks very much 
as if this particular question had never been raised at all ; un- 
less, indeed, the solution of the problem should incidentally 
reveal the fact that either more or less than he had previously 
supposed is entitled to come under the designation of knowledge.^ 

1 In this chapter, as also in Ch. XVI, infra, I have included, without the 
use of quotation marks, some excerpts from my article, "Is Realistic Epi- 
stemological Monism Inadmissible?" in the Journal of Philosophy, X, 1913, 
pp. 701-10. 



B. PROBLEMS OF THE WAYS AND MEANS OF 
KNOWING (MORPHOLOGY OF KNOWL- 
EDGE, AND GENETIC LOGIC) 

CHAPTER XV 
The Morphology of Knowledge 

The problem of acquaintance, or epistemology proper, leads 
naturally over into the problem of the way, or ways, of knowing, 
or into what may be called the morphology of knowledge. Here 
the particular problem is whether the different ways of knowing 
are, in principle and fundamentally, one ; or whether there are 
modes of cognition which are radically distinct, and between 
which no real continuity can be traced. This problem has been 
set for thinkers by the popular prevalence of what may per- 
haps be termed an absolute morphological duahsm, according 
to which there are two radically different ways of knowing, viz. 
experience and reasoning, or pure thought ; or, more exphcitly, 
perception and conception. The question naturally arises 
as to why there should be two fundamentally different ways of 
accompUshing the same end, and the search for a unitary view 
of the cognitive process begins. As might have been antici- 
pated, out of this more primitive duahsm there developed an 
antithesis between two extreme or absolute morphological 
monisms, the one conceptuahstic and the other perceptuaHstic. 

For our best illustration of absolute conceptuahstic monism 
we have to turn to a certain phase of Platonism. Plato, who 
derived his conception of science from mathematics, as is 
indicated in the well-known passage, "By the power of the 
dialectic, reason, using hypotheses ... as steps and points 
of departure, . . . may soar to the first principle of the 
whole, and ... by successive steps she descends again, with- 
out the help of any sensible object, from ideas, through 

336 



THE MORPHOLOGY OF KNOWLEDGE 337 

ideas and in ideas she ends," ^ declares that perception has no 
part in science or knowledge or the attainment of truth. Per- 
haps what he means to reject is mere perception ; but he says, 
^'We no longer seek knowledge in perception at all, but in that 
other process, however called, in which the mind is alone 
and engaged with being," a process which he variously calls 
thinking, reasoning, or opining.^ 

Our most instructive example of absolute perceptualistic 
monism will be found in the philosophy of Bergson. He ob- 
jects to the platonizing attempt to gain knowledge of reality 
by means of an examination of human concepts, as taking an 
artificial and inadequate imitation for the reality,^ which is 
adequately knowable only in a purely perceptual process, 
a sensuous and supra-intellectual intuition.^ He uses the term 
''knowledge" in speaking of ''analysis" or the conceptual mode ; 
but this analysis is "knowing" the thing as it is not, but as, 
for practical purposes, it is convenient to take it. Only in- 
tuition is knowing the thing as it really is.^ The inadequacy 
of Bergson' s one-sided perceptualism will be pointed out at 
length in our critique of anti-conceptualism ; ® so that for the 
present it will be sufficient to point out, first of all, that, as 
Bergson himself acknowledges,^ absolutely "pure perception" is 
psychologically impossible (except, perhaps, in first conscious- 
ness, or, more doubtfully, in certain rather abnormal states, such 
as those of extreme mysticism) ; and, in the second place, that 
much of what Bergson calls intuition in connection with scien- 
tific discovery is simply hypothesis, born so rich in verifying 
material, previously accumulated, that it does not need to 
"work." 

In the positions just described we find illustrated again 
in connection with the morphology of knowledge that truth 
of which we have had such abundant evidence in our investi- 

» Republic, 511 ; cf. 507 ; see A. E. Taylor, Plato, p. 49. 

2 Thecetetus, 185-7. 

3 Introduction to Metaphysics, translation by Hulme, p. 75 ; translation by 
Luce, p. 88. 

* Matter and Memory, pp. 84-5, et passim; Introduction, passim; Creative 
Evolution, p. 360. 

5 Introduction, passim. 

« See Ch. XVIII, infra. '' Matter and Memory, p. 26. 



338 THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE 

gation of epistemology proper, viz. that there has been alto- 
gether too much ahsolutism in philosophy. Absolute morpho- 
logical duaHsm, and absolute morphological monism, whether of 
the conceptual or the perceptual sort, must alike give place to a 
view which will be critical enough to make room for the meas- 
ure of truth included in each of these one-sided views, and ex- 
cluded from the others. And it must be acknowledged that here 
we receive much help from Kant. Indeed, when our interest 
is in the morphological problem, the essence of Kantianism is 
to be found in just that beginning of a critical morphological 
monism which is perhaps his greatest contribution to philosophy. 
"Concepts without percepts (intuition) are empty; percepts 
(intuition) without concepts are bhnd." In the position ex- 
pressed in this dictum the Konigsberg philosopher, without 
reverting to absolute morphological dualism, avoided the one- 
sidedness of both absolute conceptualism and absolute per- 
ceptuahsm. He showed the necessity of mental activity for 
all developed perceptual knowledge, and yet insisted upon 
the necessity of the immediacy of experience, inner or outer, 
as the touchstone of all that claims to be knowledge. 

But Kant's critical morphological monism was not fully 
satisfactory. On the one hand, while perception without defi- 
nite conception is comparatively blind, if the most original and 
primitive perception had absolutely no cognitive value, it 
would seem difficult to account for the fact of such value in later 
experiences. If what is retained from the first and brought 
into the second experience is cognitive, it seems rather dog- 
matic to deny that there was anything cognitive in that first 
experience. But objection to the other side of Kant's doctrine 
has been much more frequent, and is more readily supported. 
From the days of Fichte, Schelhng, and Hegel, on to the present, 
there have always been some to insist that Kant's phenomenal- 
ism and metaphysical agnosticism show that he went too far in 
his injunction against the appHcation of the categories of thought 
beyond the limits of human experience. Hegel especially 
emphasized the capacity of thought, beginning indeed in sense- 
perception, but proceeding, according to its own inner move- 
ment, adequately to know the nature of ultimate reality. In 
this he was followed by the various branches of the Hegelian 



THE MORPHOLOGY OF KNOWLEDGE 339 

school, and conspicuously by McTaggart, who claims that a 
complete metaphysical system of knowledge can be evolved by 
a purely conceptual dialectic, with no other dependence upon 
the data of experience than such as is just sufficient to estab- 
lish content for the most primitive of the categories, that of 
being. ^ This must be regarded as retrogression, rather than 
progress from Kant's critical monism; and much the same 
thing must be said of the neo-Kantian movement, as repre- 
sented by Hermann Cohen and his school. It does not lapse 
into a Platonic absolute anti-perceptualism ; but, in its inter- 
pretation of all perceptual elements as the products of thought- 
activity, it fails to do justice to the non-conceptual element 
involved in the foundations of knowledge. 

Much more valuable, as leading toward the much needed 
supplementation of the Kantian morphology of knowledge, are 
Herbart's well-known doctrine of apperception and Royce's 
recent philosophical discussion of ''interpretation." Royce, 
objecting both to what he takes to be the Platonic theory of 
cognition by pure conception and to the Bergsonian theory of 
cognition by pure perception,^ claims to be able to show defi- 
nitely how these one-sided views may be synthesized. In spite 
of his insistence that we human beings are never possessed of 
either pure perception or pure conception,^ he offers a triadic 
classification of the types of knowing process, which apparently 
leaves perception and conception standing as genuinely cog- 
nitive processes, in distinction from the process in which knowl- 
edge has its culmination, viz. interpretation ^ 

In view of this doctrine of three different processes of cogni- 
tion, the question might weU be raised as to whether we have 
here anything that deserves to be called monistic in the mor- 
phology of knowledge, whether it is not to be regarded as still 
more objectionable than dualism. But the answer to this 
latter query must be negative, for, since the work of Fichte 
and Hegel, we can never forget that the triadic may be 
far more monistic than the dyadic. Where there are but 
two, there is often hopeless conflict ; but where there is a 

1 Studies in Hegelian Dialectic, 1896, p. 46. 

2 The Problem of Christianity, 1913, Vol. II, pp. 117-23. 

3 lb., p. 121. * lb., pp. 124, 149-52. 



340 THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE 

third, there is hope of mediation and final unity. And so 
we would see in Royce's concept of ''interpretation" the prom- 
ise of further progress beyond both absolute duahsm and 
the two absolute monisms in the direction of a satisfactory 
critical monism. The trouble is that Royce seems not to 
have effected a complete synthesis of perception and con- 
ception; ''interpretation" seems to be a third process added 
to the other two, rather than the one all-inclusive mode of cog- 
nition. The reason for this failure is doubtless to be found, in 
part at least, in the pecuHar way in which Royce — obviously 
for the sake of leading up to certain conclusions in the phi- 
losophy of the history of religion and in metaphysics in which 
he is interested — defines interpretation. He maintains that 
it is always a triadic relation, involving an original expression 
of meaning (a sign), an interpreter, and one to whom it is 
interpreted.^ Thus it is not only an essentially social process, 
but also "calls, in ideal, for an infinite sequence of interpreta- 
tions. For every interpretation, being addressed to somebody, 
demands interpretation from the one to whom it is addressed." ^ 
Manifestly, Royce is here defining his term with a view to the 
metaphysical structure he intends to erect upon it, rather 
than with a view to the facts to be represented. Interpreta- 
tion is not necessarily, in the exact sense of the term, a social 
process ; we often make things to be signs for ourselves. But, 
in any case, interpretation, itself interpreted as Royce inter- 
prets it, cannot be made the one typical mode of cognition. 
And so, while Royce leads us to where we can gain a glimpse of 
a satisfactory critical methodological monism, he does not lead 
us into that promised land. 

WilHam James might perhaps be called a critical percep- 
tuahst, although his enthusiasm for Bergson ^ has carried him 
far in the direction of an absolute perceptualism. In Some 
Problems of Philosophy, however, while holding to the "in- 
superability of sensation," he admits that concepts give real 
knowledge, however inadequate to the fulness of reality they 
may be,* and even insists that the "eternal" truths contained 

1 The Problem of Christianity, 1913, Vol. II, pp. 140 ff. 

2 Ih., p. 150. 3 ^ Pluralistic Universe, 1909, Lecture VI. 
4 Some Problems of Philosophy, 1911, pp. 78-9, 100. 



THE MORPHOLOGY OF KNOWLEDGE 341 

in the map framed by the mind out of concepts would have 
to be acknowledged, were the world of sense annihilated.^ 

When we undertake to see whether it is not possible to realize 
the ideal of a critical monism in the morphology of knowledge, 
the question occurs whether Royce's three-fold classification 
(perception, conception, and interpretation) is not capable of 
being further simplified. In the light of what has been said 
in our constructive discussion of the problem of acquaintance, 
undoubtedly the claims of perception to be regarded as genuinely 
cognitive cannot be gainsaid. Through the activity of sense 
and whatever mental activity may further be necessary, there 
is an awareness of the existence and to some extent of the 
nature of some reality or realities. The question which must 
be considered, if a position as monistic as is compatible with a 
thoroughly critical attitude is to be established, is the question 
to what extent conception and interpretation are either not 
cognitive at all, or else reducible to practical identity with 
perception. 

Taking up conception first, our contention would be that 
this form of mental activity by itself never amounts to cogni- 
tion. Conception without perception has no connection with 
independent reality; its products are but empty forms, ab- 
stract, cut off from being. So, too, mere imagination, as that 
form of conception, broadly speaking — or better, of ideation, 
or thinking — which is least abstract, so far as qualitative 
detail is concerned, is non-cognitive. Judgment also, in the 
form of the mere supposition, assumption, hypothesis, tentative 
generalization, is manifestly not cognition; nor can ratiocina- 
tion on the basis of such assumption of itself give us knowledge. 
Its final conclusion is as tentative as its first assumption, until 
verified. Neither can even the possession of traditional teach- 
ing with reference to any fact, or as to the truth of any opinion, 
be regarded as amounting for us to knowledge of that fact or 
that truth. Merely to think, to have an opinion, or even to 
have true opinion, as Plato himself insisted,^ is not to know. 

All of these forms of mental activity, taken by themselves, 
can give us no more than preparation for cognition; they 
develop and manipulate the instruments of knowledge, but 

1 lb., pp. 73-4. 2 Meno, 98. 



342 THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE 

they all lack that immediate sensing or awareness of the pres- 
ence of reality, which constitutes the cognitive core of all 
perceptual experience. So far as their present cognitive status 
is concerned, they are related to indisputably cognitive pro- 
cesses in general as the having of after-images and other forms 
of hallucinatory sense-experience are related to normal imme- 
diate perception. They are detached from reality, and so, 
non-cognitive. In fact, they belong with dreams rather than 
with cognitions, save that they are more purposively governed 
and, as a result, more useful. ''Day-dreams," however, are 
intermediate between useful non-cognitive thinking and the 
uncontrolled dreams of sleep. 

Interpretation, on the other hand, we may regard as a form 
of cognition which is fundamentally identical with perception. 
The most primitive cognition may perhaps have been, strictly 
speaking, pure perception ; but it is generally agreed, and that 
on very good grounds, that perception without apperception is, 
or would be, comparatively — indeed, almost totally — blind. 
And what we are here concerned to suggest is that interpretation 
is simply apperception long drawn out, that apperception is 
nothing hut an extremely facile interpretation. We have sug- 
gested here, then, a critical perceptualistic morphological mon- 
ism; it will be our remaining task in this chapter, therefore, 
to investigate how far all genuinely cognitive forms of conscious- 
ness may be viewed as essentially identical with perception. 

Memory, for example, is generally recognized as being, when 
normal, genuinely cognitive. But that which distinguishes 
it from mere imagination is that the representations involved 
in memory always form part of the " apperceptive mass " in 
a more or less marginal awareness of the present conscious 
self. It is a representation of a part of the past life of the 
present perceived self, or, as James puts it, " the knowledge 
of an event, or fact, of which meantime we have not been 
thinking, with the additional consciousness that we have 
thought or experienced it before."^ And so it conforms essen- 
tially to the perceptual type of consciousness, while mere imag- 
ination does not. Historical information, again, is knowledge, 
while mere tradition is not; it has been brought sufficiently 

1 The Principles of Psychology, Vol. I, p. 648. 



THE MORPHOLOGY OF KNOWLEDGE 343 

into relation with our strictly perceptual knowledge to become 
a part of what is, broadly speaking, our perception of the real 
world in which we stand. History is community- or race- 
memory. Verified judgment is, of course, cognitive ; and this, 
too, viewed as verified, i.e. in association with the sensed or 
felt reality of which it is the interpretation, is essentially per- 
ceptual ; it is in direct experience that its verification takes 
place, the verification-process afterwards taking its place 
among the facts of memory. Generalization by itself is, as we 
have seen, mere hypothesis, and as such it is essentially con- 
ceptual and non-cognitive; but when inductive and viewed in 
conjunction with the verifying facts as experienced, it is cog- 
nitive, an interpretation of what is sensed or felt, and so, 
essentially perceptual. Ratiocination also, on the basis of 
verified judgments, is simply a drawing out further of the inter- 
pretative or essentially apperceptive process, and so includes 
the perceptual feature necessary to entitle it to be regarded as 
leading to genuine knowledge. 

It is important to note that in many cases our knowledge of 
the presence of a certain reality can only be what may be 
called perception in a complex. We are unable to clothe the 
reality in question directly and immediately with any one 
sense-quality ; but by the creation of various sense- and feeling- 
qualities and by their appropriate location, the presence of 
that reality may be readily detected, perceived. This is ob- 
viously the case with the perception of the fact of motion ; 
we detect it only in connection with our perception of a complex 
of other realities in successively different spatial relations. 
And so it is with change in general,^ and with such special 
changing realities as activity, life, and consciousness. When 
we perceive the body in certain changing relations with its 
environment, we perceive a living organism ; we perceive — 
not as a separately sensed object, but as an object sensed in 
this complex — the life and activity, and even the conscious- 
ness, of the individual soul which has the body. Indeed it is 
not too much to say that, in a somewhat broader sense of the 
term perception, we perceive the subject of this activity, the 
"entelechy" (the vitalistic principle in morphogenesis, as 

^ Cf. Bergson, La perception du changement, 1911, passim. 



344 THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE 

Driesch designates it), or "psychoid" (the vitahstic principle 
in the discharge of function i), or soul, or mind, or self, as the 
case may be. 

This perception of change in a complex is simply a special 
case of the perception of relations. Wilham James has labored 
to show that, if we are to be conscious of any relation, we must 
have an elementary feeling of that relation. ^ Now undoubt- 
edly we do have feelings of certain relations, and possibly of 
all; but it seems altogether too much to say that we know 
relations primarily by means of these feelings of relations. 
Rather do we know relations as included in a complex, which 
complex we know always ultimately by what is, in a broader 
or a narrower sense of the word, perception. 

Of special importance is the fact of the perception of conscious- 
ness as a unique creative activity, in the complex of an organ- 
ism of a certain type and its environment, the products of 
which activity are sense-qualities, memory and other images, 
ideas, feelings, volitions, etc. In the first place, it should be 
said that while mere imagination, conception, assumption, 
inference from mere assumption, the possession of traditional 
teaching, like illusion, hallucination, dreaming, and erroneous 
processes of thought generally, are not really cognitive, the 
perception of any of these processes of imagination, conception, 
and the rest, is a genuine process of cognition. 

But it is of still greater importance to note that we seem 
to have here the means of solving the old puzzles as to the 
nature and possibility of introspection. By ordinary definition, 
introspection is consciousness of one's own consciousness, or 
more exactly, if such a thing can be said to be possible at all, 
consciousness, preferably immediate, of one's own present 
consciousness. Now by our definition of consciousness as a 
unique creative activity, the products of which are sense- 
qualities, ideas, feelings, and the like, it might seem quite clear 
that when psychical products are created for the sake of cog- 
nizing our own psychical products, those which we seek to 
perceive are always necessarily different from and prior to 
those by means of which we would perceive them ; so that all 

* H. Driesch, The Science and Philosophy of the Organism, 1908, passim. 
2 Essays in Radical Empiricism, passim. 



THE MORPHOLOGY OF KNOWLEDGE 345 

introspection would seem to be, of necessity, retrospection. 
This, if true at all, would be most obviously true of psychical 
''elements," the products of that creative psychical activity 
which is the real nature of consciousness. The question of 
introspection, as the question of an immediate perception of 
consciousness, must ask whether we can perceive the activity 
itself. To this the answer would seem to be that while there is 
no special psychical product, or element, which reveals the 
presence of consciousness, except a vague feeling of activity, 
which may be at least plausibly regarded as a feeling of bodily 
attitude and condition — a circumstance which has led to the 
notion that we have no right to say there is any consciousness, 
because we cannot discover it by introspection ^ — it is never- 
theless true that we do perceive our own consciousness as an 
activity amid the complex of our bodily life and our physical 
and social environment. 

Moreover, according to the view we have set forth, we may 
be said in a broad sense to perceive our past, in so far as we 
really remember it, and in a narrower sense to perceive the 
''specious present," i.e. the present moment in its relation to 
a going past and a coming future, by means of perceptual or 
apperceptual elements which are psychical products which 
themselves endure with but partial and gradual change for an 
appreciable time, thus bridging over the temporal transition; 
and because of this the rigid contrast between introspection 
and retrospection disappears. Broadly speaking, we perceive 
our own conscious life and activity as having its place in the past 
and present and up to the very border of the still uncreated 
future ; and even in a narrower sense, we perceive our own 
consciousness in the complex of independent realities and prod- 
ucts of consciousness which fall within the "specious present." 
And this can be maintained even if, by the chronometer, the 
psychical activity directed toward perceiving the present con- 
sciousness comes after other elements comprised within the 
unity of this specious present. 

But if we adopt this solution of the problem, another ques- 
tion immediately presents itself. It is simply a special in- 

1 Cf. Wm. James, "Does Consciousness Exist?" Essays in Radical Empiri- 
cism, Essay I. 



346 THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE 

stance of the "egocentric predicament," that we can never 
introspect an experience which, as a content of the specious 
present, does not therewith come to be an introspected experi- 
ence ; but does this not mean that introspection changes essen- 
tially the character of what it seeks to investigate? To this 
question, however, our theory of the internality and externality 
of relations enables us to answer that it is quite conceivable 
that the fact of introspection should, in many cases, be "ex- 
ternal" to the remaining content, so far as the purposes which 
need to be taken into account are concerned. Reduced to a 
minimum, to introspect is to think of my present experience 
as my experience or my activity. It is true that so thinking 
may be the occasion of further psychical changes, but whether 
or not these changes are sufficient to thwart the purpose to 
introspect can only be determined by the consequences in each 
particular instance. 

But possibly this somewhat elaborate treatment of the 
problem of introspection is unnecessary. Have we not an 
intuitive awareness of our own conscious activity? May it 
not be plausibly contended that every act of consciousness is 
invariably self-presenting, and that the common confusion on 
this point is due to the fact that it is never self -representing ? 
This compels us to raise definitely the question as to the nature 
of intuition, including its relation to perception, a question 
which would in any case demand our attention in connection 
with the attempt to establish, in the morphology of knowledge, 
a critical monism, and especially so when that monism is a 
critical perceptualistic monism. 

What we are concerned with here is the new, or perceptual, 
intuitionism, rather than the old, or conceptual, variety of 
intuitional philosophy. This perceptual intuitionism, the 
doctrine that in sense-experience, or feeling, or both, there is 
a direct awareness of independent reality of some sort, is most 
compatible with a realistic monism in epistemology ; but there 
are certain approaches to it among some of the dualistic and 
idealistic philosophers. Kant, for instance, has his doctrine 
of intuition, by which he seems to mean the content of experi- 
ence at the extreme limit of pure, or non-conceptual, percep- 
tion. ThiS; however, is regarded as a product of independent 



THE MORPHOLOGY OF KNOWLEDGE 347 

reality, rather than its presentation. Fries and his followers 
have recognized the psychical fact of an ostensibly immediate 
awareness, through feeling, of the nature of an independent 
reality which is never directly presented ; but they virtually 
deny it any genuinely cognitive character. Volkelt's doctrine 
of intuition is somewhat similar to that of the Friesians, in that 
it makes feeling the channel of such intuitive awareness as 
there is; but he differs from them in apparently attaching, 
although not without doubt and hesitation in some instances, 
some cognitive value to such intuition. His list of intuitive 
certainties, however, is not extensive, and his general attitude 
is conservative. Bergson's philosophy, as a sort of veiled 
psychological idealism, is at the same time incipiently realistic ; 
and reference has already been made to his methodological 
emphasis upon intuition. His doctrine is very fruitful in con- 
nection with a perceptualistic monism, but certain limitations 
are to be noted. In the first place, there is the troublesome 
question as to just how far he would have us regard as inde- 
pendently real the object of pure perception. Then there is 
the obvious difficulty involved in having the absolutely pure per- 
ception, in which alone, according to Bergson's extreme anti- 
concept ualism, true knowledge is to be found. Moreover, 
as has been said above, what is set forth as marking the 
place of intuition in scientific investigation seems really to 
be nothing more — at least ordinarily — than the produc- 
tion of the unifying hypothesis after facts sufficient to verify 
it have been accumulated. But among those not avowedly 
realistic in their general epistemology, perhaps no one comes 
nearer to a perceptual intuitionism than W. E. Hocking, with 
his insistence upon the cognitive function of feeling. While 
finding much in this that is suggestive and that seems tenable, 
we should have to dissent, nevertheless, from his use of this 
line of thought as an argument for theoretical idealism. More- 
over, while agreeing with him in rejecting the Bergsonian anti- 
conceptuaUsm, we should have to raise the query whether, in 
his synthesis of Hegelian idealism with Bergsonian intuition- 
ism,i he has not gone even more than dangerously far in the 
direction of the dogmatic rationalism of the older Hegelians. 

^ "The Significance of Bergson," Yale Review, III, 1914, pp. 325-6. 



348 THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE 

A similar dogmatism, as we have seen, marks the intuition- 
ism of the neo-reaHsts. But, within the hmits of the (as we 
hope) less dogmatic '' critical realistic epistemological monism" 
to which we have indicated our adherence, what becomes of 
intuition as a mode of cognition, and what bearing has our 
answer to this question upon our search for a critical perceptual- 
istic methodological monism? In the first place, it is funda- 
mental to our epistemological view that we have an immediate, 
or, if one chooses so to use the term, an intuitive awareness 
of the sense-qualities, feelings and other psychical products 
for which our own psychical nature is responsible. This in 
recognition of the Kantian doctrine of the '^intuition" of the 
manifold of sense, and of the conscious relation which is the 
nearest we ever come, after early infancy, to *'pure percep- 
tion." But ''pure perception" is not the only cognition. In 
perceiving sense-qualities we also have a direct or intuitive 
awareness of certain primary qualities of the independent 
realities of our environment. Moreover, in and through our 
feeling-consciousness we have a practically intuitive awareness 
of various values. Indeed it would seem that, whereas rela- 
tions are most commonly cognized by being analyzed out of an 
essentially perceptual complex, but may also be more or less 
definitely felt, values on the contrary are probably most com- 
monly cognized by being felt, i.e. in a more distinctly intuitive 
way, although they may also be found by analysis of a given 
complex. 

But the interest in maintaining a positive empirical intuition- 
ism usually centres in the doctrine that through our feelings, 
as distinguished from the sensations of the special senses, we 
can perceive not only certain existences, but to some extent 
the nature of those existences. What is claimed is a sort of 
direct or, in the narrower sense, perceptual awareness of what 
is ordinarily regarded as knowable only by inference, or in 
some other mediate way, even if this mediate cognition may 
also, as we have here claimed, be interpreted as itself ultimately 
and fundamentally perceptual. We may concede at once that 
hypotheses are often suggested in such a way as to be accom- 
panied by the feeling that they are true; but we must not 
allow to pass unchallenged the assumption that such feeling is 



THE MORPHOLOGY OF KNOWLEDGE 349 

always valid ground for confidence. And yet, on the other 
hand, we must insist that this anticipatory feeling of the truth 
of an hypothesis is not in itself always ground for suspecting 
its falsehood. Obviously, in the light of experience, there is 
no absolutely uniform relation between the feeling that an hy- 
pothesis is true and its being actually true ; and yet, on the other 
hand, this feeling cannot be dismissed as having no significance. 
We would claim that it sometimes gives ground for confidence, 
and sometimes ground for suspicion. We shall not go into 
this topic very fully in this connection, as it belongs also to the 
problem of mediate knowledge, a consideration of which is to 
follow. And yet it may be said here that what is ''intuitively" 
felt to be true is generally something which it is pleasant to 
beHeve ; and certain highly emotional and wilful, and perhaps 
somewhat uncritical and unanalytical, natures tend to affirm 
it as true on these psychological rather than logical grounds. 
But if we would be adequately critical we must recognize that 
even if it may sometimes be that the pleasant hypothesis is 
pleasant because it is useful, it may also sometimes be pleas- 
ant in spite of the fact that it is not useful, but quite injurious ; 
and further, that even if it may sometimes be that the useful 
hypothesis is useful because it is true, it may sometimes be 
useful (relatively to some proximate end) in spite of the fact 
that it is not true. It is only the pleasantness which is due to 
the usefulness which is due to truth which can be taken as an 
indication of truth ; and the task of distinguishing such pleas- 
antness from all other varieties of agreeable emotion which 
may be associated with the occurrence of hypotheses is by no 
means easy. 

It is important, finally, to note that the appreciation of 
values, which is commonly ''intuitive" and always fundamen- 
tally perceptual, may function in the recognition of certain 
realities. The work of a certain artist, for example, may be 
perceived as being such by the sort and degree of value which it 
possesses. This obvious truth may prove capable of important 
applications. 

Our conclusion, then, is that while the absolute perceptual- 
istic monist is over-dogmatic in affirming the purely and narrowly 
perceptual character of all cognition, it is nevertheless true 



350 THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE 

that, broadly speaking, all cognition is, ultimately and funda- 
mentally and indeed in its innermost essence, always percep- 
tual. Mediate knowledge is knowledge only by virtue of the 
support of immediate knowledge ; and so, its relation to imme- 
diate knowledge being rightly regarded as an internal relation, 
it enters into its knowledge-status only as a part of the ma- 
chinery of apperception, or, to use Royce's term, of interpre- 
tation. Inasmuch, however, as all ordinary perception involves 
apperception, interpretation, it may also be said to be, in some 
broad sense of the term, conceptual. But knowing is never 
merely conceptual. Conception, we repeat, is cognitive only 
in interpretation, i.e. in combination with perception. 



CHAPTER XVI 
The Genesis of the A Priori 

Before we proceed further, our critical realistic epistemo- 
logical monism, if we are to be able to regard it as adequately 
established, must be fortified against possible attacks on the 
ground that it is incompatible with any current interpretation 
of that element in human cognitive activity which, in its causa- 
tion, is prior to the experience of the individual. The classical 
interpretations of this a priori element may be grouped under 
the following heads : absolute genetic dualism, rationalistic 
absolute genetic monism, and empirical absolute genetic mon- 
ism. These must be examined with reference to their com- 
patibiHty with our doctrine of acquaintance; and if it should 
appear on the one hand that none of them can be held consist- 
ently with our critical epistemological monism, and if, on the 
other hand, it should not appear that any one of the three is 
demonstrably valid, it will then be incumbent upon us to 
inquire whether or not a fourth theory, in itself tenable, and 
agreeing with our general epistemological theory, may not be 
estabHshed. Such investigations would take us into the field 
of psychogenesis, and at least into the borders of what has 
been called Genetic Logic, ''the genetic science of logical 
process." ^ 

Of absolute genetic dualism with reference to these cognitive 
factors which become explicit as the fundamental forms of 
thought, the best illustration is to be found in the philosophy 
of Kant, whose doctrine on this point has been immensely 
influential. His teaching on this subject is an absolute dual- 
ism, made up of an absolutely rationahstic or non-empirical 
doctrine of the origin of those fundamental forms of cognition 
which seem to be already involved in the first intelligible expe- 

1 J. M. Baldwin, Thought and Things, or Genetic Logic, Vol. I, 1906, Intro- 
duction. 

351 



352 THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE 

rience of the individual, and an absolutely empiricist doctrine 
of the origin of the sense-material, or contents, of cognition. 
Mind, on this view, is absolutely active {i.e. creative) with refer- 
ence to the forms of objects, and absolutely passive with reference 
to their sense-quahties. An unknowable independent reahty 
presumably produces these sense-data within our experience, and 
these are worked up into objects according to necessary and 
universal ways of apperceiving which are not further expH- 
cable. The agnosticism is logically inevitable. Obviously it 
would be pure dogmatism to assume that the independent 
things-in-themselves are even Hke the objects of sense; for 
this would mean nothing less than the affirmation that, after 
the sense-materials, as products of an unexperienced cause, 
have been built up in a certain way into objects, i.e. radically 
modified, by another cause (the human mind), these constructs 
miraculously happen to copy one of their unknown causes, 
although no one can show that they do so, nor any reason why 
they should. That is, even representative ''knowledge" of 
independent reality is precluded; it could never be certain, 
or even probable, and so could not be knowledge, even if it did 
happen to be true representation. Much less, then, could there 
be, on the basis of the Kantian absolute genetic dualism, 
presentative knowledge, such as is required by our reaHstic 
epistemological monism. 

Most modern philosophical thought, both pre- and post- 
Kantian, has tended, with reference to this genetic problem, 
to an absolutely monistic position, either rationahstic or em- 
pirical. Of pre-Kantian absolute genetic monism in its ration- 
alistic form, the doctrines of Descartes and Leibniz furnish us 
with good examples. Descartes's pure rationaHsm led him to 
raise the question why we should take the necessities of thought 
as giving us knowledge of the nature of reality. The only 
solution of this problem for Descartes was to be found in the 
postulate of a holy and perfect God who would not deceive us ; 
whereas the existence of such a God, he had to admit, could be 
estabHshed only by means of an argument which seemed to 
him (if not to many others) to be rationally necessary and 
thus one of those very processes the vaHdity of which must 
remain problematic until the existence of this Perfect Being 



THE GENESIS OF THE A PRIORI 353 

is assumed. It is a clear case of a logical circle. In Leibniz, 
however, we see the thoroughgoing rationalist; according to 
him the object of immediate apprehension is in toto the product 
of the individual monad which experiences and knows it. 

After Kant there soon occurred, notably in Fichte and Hegel, 
a recrudescence of this doctrine that the creative activity of 
the Ego, or of Thought, is sufficient to account for all the con- 
tents of experience, including even those sense-elements which 
seem most unmistakably to be "given." More recently still, 
many neo-Kantian thinkers, such as T. H. Green, and espe- 
cially H. Cohen and his school, have taught that the object is 
the exclusive product of the a priori or rational activities of the 
thinking subject. According to Green the object is made 
what it is by its relations, which are, in all cases, the work 
of thought. Cognition is always construction, according to 
Cohen; the sense-qualities which we know are known only as 
the object of the thought which constructs them, as truly as 
thought constructs any other object. Manifestly such a 
doctrine could never accommodate itself to a critical realistic 
monism in epistemology, but only to an idealistic interpreta- 
tion of the object of experience. If there is no reality which 
exists, or can exist, independently of thought, all question as 
to the possibility of an immediate experience of such an inde- 
pendently existing reality becomes nonsensical. 

As in the case of its rationalistic form, so also in its empiri- 
cal form absolute genetic monism has its pre-Kantian as well 
as its post-Kantian representatives. Of the former, at least 
within the modern period, Hume must be regarded as the most 
important. All our ideas, even those of pure mathematics, 
he claims, are copied from our impressions, and these sense- 
impressions are simply "data" passively received, the ultimate 
of knowledge as of experience. More absolutely empiricist 
than Locke, who recognized a certain activity and initiative of 
mind in reflection upon the simple ideas of sense, Hume made 
even reflection a purely passive process, the ideas, or faint im- 
pressions, being simply the consequents found, as a matter of 
fact, habitually and inexplicably to follow their inert antece- 
dents, the more vivid impressions of the senses.^ 

1 A Treatise of Human Nature, Bk. I, Pt. I, §§ I, II; Pt. Ill, § L 
2a 



354 THE PROBLEM OP KNOWLEDGE 

Hume was followed, in this empirical form of absolute genetic 
monism, by the associationists, notably James Mill and his 
son, John Stuart Mill, according to whom all the contents 
of human experience and thought are simply series of passive 
psychological antecedents and consequents, none of which 
represent anything more objective or knowable than a "per- 
manent possibility of sensations." On this view, what is 
immediately experienced is never anything but what depends 
upon its being experienced as an essential condition of its exist- 
ence, whatever invariable antecedents there may be besides. 

An important modification of the empirical form of absolute 
genetic monism was developed by Herbert Spencer. The 
seeming insufficiency of the experience-hypothesis to explain 
reflex actions and instincts he explains as due to the fact that 
these automatic psychical connections have resulted from the 
registration of ''experiences continued for numberless genera- 
tions." He assumes that the various strengths of different 
psychical relations are proportionate, other things being equal, 
to the multiphcation of experiences. An infinity of experiences 
would produce an indissoluble psychical relation; and though 
such infinity of experiences cannot be received by a single 
individual, yet it may be received, it is claimed, by the succes- 
sion of individuals forming a race. Thus the genesis of all 
instinctive elements of consciousness, including the forms of 
intuition and of thought, is explained on the single principle 
of frequency of repetition of experience in the history of the 
race, "supplemented by the law that habitual psychical suc- 
cessions entail some hereditary tendency to such successions, 
which, under persistent conditions, will become cumulative in 
generation after generation."^ But even on this view, it must 
be admitted that our critical realistic epistemological monism 
would be untenable. If the data of experience are received 
in a purely passive manner, there is no way of knowing that 
we experience independent reality, or even a copy of it, whether 
it is the experience of the individual or of the race that is 
concerned. 

Now from the scientific point of view there is a strong pre- 
sumption in favor of some such natural explanation of the 

1 H. Spencer, Principles of Psychology, § 207. 



THE GENESIS OF THE A PRIORI 355 

empirical (or at least natural) genesis of what is, relatively 
to the individual, a priori. Human consciousness has a genesis, 
and it is only sensible and scientific to seek a unitary, natural 
explanation of all its elements. On this account empirical 
monism, especially in the modified and less radical form in 
which we shall present it, is scientifically preferable as a genetic 
theory, other things being equal, to an absolute genetic dualism. 
It is also preferable to the rationalistic form of absolute genetic 
monism, we would contend, as being a more obvious and less 
strained interpretation of the facts. An absolute empirical 
monism is not wholly satisfactory, however. Apart altogether 
from the controversial doctrine of the inheritance of acquired 
characters assumed in Spencer's evolutionism, there is the 
difficulty emphasized by William James, that "the manner in 
which we now become acquainted with complex objects need 
not in the least resemble the manner in which the original 
elements of our consciousness grew up." ^ We now ordinarily 
perceive quite readily the nature of the present object, just 
because we have preformed categories for all possible objects; 
and we have no right to assume that the mere existence of 
things to be known was originally sufficient to bring about a 
knowledge of them, because even now it is not always suffi- 
cient.2 James accordingly propounds his own theory, that the 
original elements of consciousness came into being as ''spon- 
taneous variations, fitted by good luck (those of them which 
have survived) to take cognizance of objects (that is, to steer 
us in our active dealings with them), without being in any 
intelligible sense immediate derivations from them." ^ Time 
and space-relations, he still holds, are impressed from without ; 
the same is true, he claims, of ''an immense number of our 
mental habitudes, many of our abstract beliefs, and all our 
ideas of concrete things, and of their ways of behavior." 
"Here the mind is passive and tributary, a servile copy, fatally 
and unresistingly fashioned from without." ^ But there are 
certain combinations, such as the forms of judgment, "which, 
taken per se, are not congruent either with the forms in which 
reaHty exists or in those in which experiences befall us," and 

^ W. James, The Principles of Psychology, Vol. II, p. 630. 
»/6. 3/6., p. 631. *Ib.,p.Q32. 



356 THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE 

which thus give evidence of selection, emphasis, and, it may be, 
other forces, unknown to us.^ James concludes therefore that 
the "ideal and inward relations amongst the objects of our 
thought which can in no intelligible sense whatever be inter- 
preted as reproductions of the order of outer experience,'^ 
and which are often ''far more interesting to us and more 
charming than the mere rates of frequency of their time and 
space-conjunctions," are all ''secondary and brain-born, 
'spontaneous variations,' most of them, of our sensibiUty, 
whereby certain elements of experience, and certain arrange- 
ments in time and space, have acquired an agreeableness which 
otherwise would not have been felt." ^ "The theoretic part of 
our organic mental structure . . . can be due neither to our 
own nor to our ancestors' experience." ^ 

With reference to this theory of James, it is to be noted in 
the first place that, while still strongly empirical, it is not an 
absolute empirical genetic monism. It offers a purely empirical 
explanation of time- and space-relations; but of all proposi- 
tions which express the results of a comparison it gives a sort 
of subordinately rationalistic interpretation, although always 
within the limits of the natural or " naturaHstic " explanation 
in terms of spontaneous variation and the survival of the 
fittest,^ his doctrine being in general consonance with that of 
the neo-Darwinians and opposed to that of the neo-Lamarck- 
ians.^ The view as a whole may be regarded as representing 
a critical empirical genetic monism, although not necessarily 
the only, or even the most satisfactory, form of such doctrine. 
It is fundamentally empirical and seeks to adhere as closely 
as possible to the empiricist doctrine, but, within the limits of 
a unitary theory, it makes great concessions to the rationaUstic 
view of the a priori. 

From the point of view of our epistemological interest, how- 
ever, the view of James, even if it should be felt to be in itself 
highly defensible, is not to be left free from attack. Scarcely 
more than the theories previously examined is it compatible 
with the critical reaKstic epistemological monism which we 

1 W. James, The Principles of Psychology, Vol. II, pp. 633-4. 

2 lb., p. 639. 3 76., pp. 677-8. 

* lb., pp. 644, 676-8. « 76., pp. 678-88. 



THE GENESIS OF THE A PRIORI 357 

seem to have found to be the only tenable positive solution of 
the problem of acquaintance. On the one hand, in so far as a 
passive empiricism is retained with reference to some elements, 
the difficulties we have already urged against absolute empirical 
genetic monism remain. On the other hand, if any consider- 
able number of the necessary forms of thought or, more particu- 
larly, if all the more fundamental ones, except, perhaps, those 
of space and time, are merely fortunate spontaneous variations 
which enable us to adjust ourselves satisfactorily to our envi- 
ronment, then, even if a realistic epistemological monism should 
happen to be true, we should never be able to know it. We 
could never know that an independently real environment 
had come to be within immediate experience ; we could never 
know that the product of the combination of the immediate 
data of sense, dependent for their existence upon consciousness, 
with the products of the activity of thought, or at least of 
apperceptive consciousness, was not all the reality to be either 
experienced or believed in. Consequently, if we chose to be 
guided by the principle of parsimony, we should have to reject 
the hypothesis of a realistic epistemological monism, even if 
we could not refute the suggestion of its truth. But, disre- 
garding for the moment this "law" of parsimony, and suppos- 
ing the unprovable doctrine of realistic epistemological mon- 
ism true, we should have to try to explain in some way the 
marvellous continuous coincidence of the construct with the 
independent reality. The hypothesis of "accidental" varia- 
tion and natural selection would then seem, if we calculated the 
chances of such an "accident," according to the "law of proba- 
bilities," probably less plausible than that of either old-fashioned 
teleology or Bergson's "creative evolution." Some non- 
mechanical factor would seem necessary adequately to account 
for the appearance of the required forms of mental activity. 
But suppose we test James's hypothesis of the a priori (as 
made up of spontaneous psychical variations selected by the 
environment) on the assumed ground of absolute epistemological 
dualism. There could, of course, be no immediate knowledge ; 
could there be any knowledge at all? At this point we shall 
have to anticipate to some extent the results of our discussion 
of mediate knowledge. If we define truth as representation of 



358 THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE 

reality sufficient for our practical purposes in the situation in 
which we predicate an idea of reality, may it not be maintained 
that, if we feel no insufficiency of the judgment for our prac- 
tical purposes, we have, in spite of our never having any imme- 
diate knowledge of independent reality, what may be called 
mediate knowledge of what may be called truth ? The answer 
is that it would be possible to define mediate knowledge in such 
a way as would allow an affirmative reply. We could call 
knowledge readiness to act on ideas that work satisfactorily, 
but calling it so would not make it so. Might it not also be 
maintained that what we would have would be simply a prac- 
tical substitute for knowledge where real knowledge is impos- 
sible, and that nothing but an extreme pragmatism would 
identify the one with the other? We have known all along 
that we have either knowledge, or some practical makeshift 
for it ; but to recognize this is not to solve the problem as to 
whether we have knowledge or not. The trouble with an abso- 
lute epistemological dualism is that we do not know that the 
independent reality exists ; we have assumed it, to be sure, but 
on reflection we find that an idealistic epistemological monism 
seems equally defensible. If we never experience immediately 
a (physical) reality which has existed independently of our 
experiencing it, how do we know that any such reality exists? 
But if we do not know enough about the independent reality 
to know that it exists, we do not know anything about it at all. 
The proposed definition of mediate knowledge, then, according 
to which the epistemological dualist could have knowledge of 
independent reality, even though no such reality had ever been 
experienced by him, must be pronounced inadequate. 

Let us then pass over to the suggested idealistic point of 
view, and ask whether one holding James's theory of the 
a priori could consistently hold to the possibility of knowledge. 
We see at once that he could have not only immediate knowl- 
edge of reality, but, also, if the pragmatic view of truth and 
knowledge be justified, mediate knowledge as well. Shall we 
not take this then as an indication, or even as a proof, that 
idealism (even if it should have to become a disguised idealism, 
eventually) and, incidentally, pragmatism, are true, even if 
attempts to prove idealism directly can seem to succeed always 



THE GENESIS OF THE A PRIORI 359 

only at the expense of fallacy? Can we solve our problem of 
the possibility of knowledge on James's theory of the a priori, 
and at the same time find for the first time a good argument 
for idealism, not to speak of pragmatism? We can answer in 
the affirmative, if at all, only if no other theory of the a priori 
that is in itself tenable can be found compatible with the possi- 
bility of knowledge. Is any such alternative theory tenable? 
Our reply is that in the present state of our knowledge there 
are three possible theories, no one of which can as yet be de- 
clared untenable, and any one of which would serve as a basis 
for asserting the possibility of knowledge, both immediate 
and mediate, on the basis of a realistic epistemological monism. 
These theories are as follows : first, that under certain condi- 
tions, at least in the psychical realm, the transmission of an 
acquired character to later generations may take place, and 
that certain of the most fundamental of our mental ^'forms'' 
of thought are, as related to the experience of the individual, 
a priori, but, as related to the experience of the race, the result 
of impressions of the general nature of reality which have been 
taken by mind in its exploring activities (sensing and other 
creative psychical activities) ; second, that one of the spon- 
taneous variations, or mutations, which has occurred and be- 
come hereditary in the course of evolution is such a high degree 
of mental alertness and impressionableness as would make 
possible the very rapid learning, on the part of each individual, 
of the most fundamental ''forms" and relations of reality, 
and so of what ought to be, or must be, the fundamental forms 
of thought — so rapid, indeed, that the process may seem to 
be either one of inheritance of an ''acquired" character or one 
of simple participation in a character universally native to 
mind, and not one of learning, or "trial and error," at all ; and 
third, a combination of the mutually compatible elements of 
the two theories just stated. Among these three theories there 
can be found, we would claim, a theory which is at least as 
defensible in itself as James's theory of the origination of the 
*'a priori'* as a mere "spontaneous variation" to be preserved 
by natural selection ; a theory, moreover, which would be 
entirely compatible with our doctrine of immediate knowledge 
on a reaHstic basis. 



360 THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE 

It will thus be seen that, while our epistemological doctrine 
would be defensible on the theory of the transmissibility of the 
effects of use (which theory, it is admitted, even by those who 
criticise it on methodological grounds as being ''not a legiti- 
mate hypothesis" in biolog^^, nevertheless "may be true"),^ 
it does not necessarily stand or fall with that theory. Even 
if the use-inheritance theory should become utterly discredited, 
the second of the three theories just mentioned would still be 
unrefuted and highly defensible. 

But the last word has not yet been said on the inheritance 
of acquired characters. The question has been exhaustively 
discussed, without definite result, with reference to gross struc- 
tural characters ; but, although, as the psychologist McDougall 
has remarked, it is in the study of behavior that our best hope 
lies of answering the question of the transmission of acquired 
characters,^ almost nothing has been done as yet systematically 
to investigate the problem in this field. And yet some im- 
pressive apparent instances of the inheritance of acquired 
function have been observed by chance and recorded.^ 

Now in connection with this idea of the inheritance of func- 
tional characters acquired through use, the field of investiga- 
tion which is most germane to our present interest is that 
of the instinctive elements in intellectual consciousness. And 
it is important to note at the outset that an increasing place is 
being given, by students of the subject, to consciousness, and 
even to cognitive consciousness, in instinctive behavior. Thus 
while in Hobhouse ^ we find instinct described as an adaptive 
but not intelligent combination of reflexes,^ and even in Berg- 
son the doctrine that intelligence in connection with conscious- 
ness is accidental and the sign of a deficit of instinct,® we find 
McDougall maintaining that every instinct involves knowing, 
as well as feeling and conation, with reference to its object.^ 

1 E.g. Hugh Elliot, in Introduction to J. B. Lamarck's Zoological Philosophy, 
Eng. Tr., 1914, pp. xxxviii-liii. 

2 Psychology : the Study of Behavior, pp. 177-80. 

3 G. J. Romanes, Mental Evolution in Animals, 1884, pp. 195, 196-7 ; E. 
Rignano, Upon the Inheritance of Acquired Characters, 1905, Eng. Tr., 1911, pp. 
162, 171 ; Jordan and Kellogg, Evolution and Animal Life, 1908, p. 202. 

* Mind in Evolution, p. 67. 

' Cf. M. Parmelee, The Science of Human Behavior, 1913, p. 226. 

* Creative Evolution, p. 145. "^ Social Psychology, pp. 26-7. 



THE GENESIS OF THE A PRIORI 361 

Again, whereas James took the once radical ground that, after 
its first performance by an animal with memory, an instinc- 
tive action ceases to be purely blind and unintelligent,^ it is 
now maintained by Stout that since learning by experience is 
itself an intelligent process, the intelligence involved in instinct 
cannot be purely an after-effect of learning by experience, but 
that it must have been present to. some extent in the first per- 
formance of the instinctive act.^ 

But it is to be noted, as Lloyd Morgan has pointed out,^ 
that this doctrine of the essential place of intelHgence in instinct 
involves, conversely, the fundamental place of instinct in intel- 
ligence, or, in other words, the doctrine of an inheritance in 
some instances, of meaning. And even Lloyd Morgan him- 
self, whose presuppositions, as a consistent parallelist, have 
always been in favor of the mechanistic, or, as he calls it, the 
'' physiological" interpretation of instinct,^ confesses that he 
is not prepared to deny the presence of inherited meaning in 
some cases at least. ^ But in view of the fact that meaning is 
normally acquired through experience,® we seem almost forced, 
finally, to infer the inheritance of meaning originally acquired 
in and through ancestral experience. It may be felt at first 
that H. R. Marshall goes too far when he asserts that reason 
is a special development of instinct ; ^ but arguments and specu- 
lations have recently appeared, notably in the writings of Berg- 
son, which make some such conclusion seem not unreasonable. 
In instinct, according to Bergson, there is an innate knowledge 
of definite objects ; but intelligence also, he claims, has knowl- 
edge which cannot be adequately explained by pointing to what 
the individual has learned as a result of his own experience, 
simply. Intelligence possesses innate or instinctive knowledge, 
not of definite things, but of relations, such as those of like to 
like, content to container, and cause to effect. This doctrine 
of innate intelligence, which Bergson himself is careful to dis- 
tinguish from the long-since discredited scholastic theory of 
''innate ideas," is to be interpreted as meaning essentially 

1 Principles of Psychology, II, p. 390. 

^Manual of Psychology, 3d ed., 1913, pp. 349-54. 

3 Mind, N.S., Vol. XXIII, 1914, pp. 169 S. 

* Instinct and Experience, p. 110. * Mind, loc. cit., p. 179. 

« See Stout, op. cit., pp. 169, 183-4, 385. ^ Instinct and Reason, p. 462, 



362 THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE 

that the mind possesses innate knowledge of the most funda- 
mental categories required for the interpretation of nature, 
because and in the sense that it makes an instinctive use of 
them.^ 

But Bergson did not reap the full reward of his theory, 
because of his vacillation on the issue of realism and idealism. 
He may be largely right in discounting the categories of mechan- 
istic science as means of interpreting life, on the ground that 
our intelligence, as it leaves the hands of nature, has for its 
chief object not life, but the unorganized solid, so that intellect 
was fashioned to the form of inert matter, and as a result mis- 
takenly tends to impose the categories or forms of thought 
derived from matter in its interpretation of all objects, even 
the process of life itself ; ^ although even here the fact seems 
to be overlooked that our most fundamental concept of causality 
seems to owe its form to experience of a life-process, rather than 
to experience of inert matter. But what we would criticise 
especially in Bergson in this connection is the extent to which 
he seems willing to concede to the idealist the mental origin 
of the forms or relations exhibited by the material world of 
our experience. Because, on the one hand, as we have pointed 
out,^ he failed to note the psychical activity involved even in 
''pure perception," in the production, namely, of the sense- 
qualities of objects, and being im willing, on the other hand, 
to accept the Kantian doctrine that all the qualities of objects 
save these sense-qualities are the product of mind, he was 
naturally led to the view that the mental forms or categories 
applicable to things are the result of a compromise between 
matter and mind; for, as he says, even assuming that the 
forms into which we fit matter come entirely from the mind, 
they can scarcely be applied constantly to objects without the 
latter soon leaving a mark on them, so that, if we give to matter, 
we probably also receive something from it.^ This would 
leave us in uncertainty as to just what were the qualities of 
objects, even of matter, independently of the products of con- 
scious activities. 

If, however, with Bergson's doctrine of direct perception of 

1 Creative Evolution, pp. 147-51. * lb., pp. 153, 160, 161. 

3 Ch. XV, supra. * Time and Free Will, p. 223. 



THE GENESIS OF THE A PRIORI 363 

reality we combine our theory of the presence of creative sense- 
activity even in pure perception, the way is open to affirm the 
revelation in perception, as ''pure" as we ever have it, of the 
universal, preexistent forms of matter. The categories would 
then appear to be, as S. Alexander contends that they are, 
characters in the world, possessed by things as well as by mind, 
and first carried up from material existence into mental exist- 
ence ; so that once consciousness is given — as a fortunate 
variation, if no more — we need no further successful varia- 
tion in order to secure the categories, or any other a priori 
parts of knowledge.^ Without needing to follow Alexander 
further, we would be able to account for the orthogenesis of 
mental evolution, which is by no means adequately explained 
by James's theory of mere accidental variation and natural 
selection. An activistic theory of all conscious processes, 
together with the doctrine of an instinctive knowledge of cer- 
tain fundamental relations, accounted for by the inheritance 
of acquired meaning, or, to say what amounts to the same 
thing, of intellectual habit — or else, as an alternative view, 
the appearance, as a mutation, of a new form of life with a 
very high degree of psychical alertness and impressionableness, 
with the consequent yery rapid learning, by the individual, of 
the most fundamental relations of things — would leave to 
natural selection no greater task than it may very well have 
been able to accomplish. 

But we must guard against exaggerating the a posteriori 
character of the ''a priori.'' W. K. Wright has contended 
that all our fundamental categories have had a social origin, 
and this view he thinks necessary if we are to account for the 
fact that those categories, as actually employed, vary greatly 
in different societies and stages of culture.^ We would admit 
that the specific form, in which certain categories are employed 
by particular groups and in particular stages of cultural de- 
velopment, is capable, at least partly, of a social explanation. 
This is manifestly true, for example, of the phenomenalistic 
notion of causality at present dominant in the natural sciences, 
and through them to some extent in popular thought. But 

^Mind, N.S., Vol. XXI, 1912, pp. 16, 17. 

* "The Genesis of the Categories," Journal of Philosophy, X, 1913, 645-57. 



364 THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE 

with reference to the genesis of our fundamental categories in 
their most generic form, this appeal to social psychology is in- 
adequate; they are, broadly speaking, not products of social 
tradition, but instruments of knowledge employed by the 
individual to-day, either habitually, because very rapidly 
learned from reality by the developing individual, or else in- 
stinctively, because inherited from ancestors by whom they 
were moulded on the reality revealed through the creation of 
sense-qualities which were located on the objects of the environ- 
ment, necessarily in the form and order in which those objects 
existed. 

We return, then, to our statement that what the Kantian 
regards as the activity of the absolutely a priori categories of 
thought, is quite possibly instinctive apperceptive activity. 
Kant's doctrine of a 'transcendental unity of apperception," 
imposing upon the object a unity which it would not otherwise 
possess, is, from this point of view, largely false and much too 
simple. There is a discoverable unity in all active things, and 
this unity already existent may be represented in an antici- 
patory way by that early learned or even instinctive appercep- 
tion which would be, in either case, explained as having been 
originally, whether in the hfe of the individual or in that of his 
ancestors, the result of sense-activitj^ and attentive analysis 
directed toward other unitary objects. The only unity im- 
posed upon the object by the psychical subject is a tertiary 
quality, the unitj^ which a more or less complex content acquires 
by virtue of its being related to some interest, or purpose, as 
end {terminus ad quern or terminus a quo), as obstacle or as 
means. 

There are thus, we would maintain, various degrees of apri- 
ority in the apperceptive activity involved in the perception 
of objects, from what is most universally inherited to what has 
been most recently acquired by the individual ; but in no case 
is this an absolute apriority. It is always, in the last analysis, 
the result of experience. While doing justice to the elements 
of truth in nativistic theories, it is frankly, although critically, 
on the genetic side. And yet, on the other hand, since we do 
not interpret sense-experience as passively received, but as 
actively produced by the psychical subject, our doctrine of 



THE GENESIS OF THE A PRIORI 365 

the only relatively a priori character of the ordinary formal 
"relatmg" activity involved in ordinary perception is very 
far from lapsing into the old empiricism. Ours is an activistic 
empiricism; all sense-activity is creative activity with refer- 
ence to the secondary qualities of the object, and all thought- 
activity is creative of the ideas and their associations, while 
some thought-activity is creative of tertiary qualities and rela- 
tions of objects as well. But more than all this, whenever a 
new kind of psychical activity has appeared in the history of 
the race, whether it be the production of a new sense-quality 
or the formation of a new idea, we have psychical activity 
which is absolutely a priori. It is not, as Kant seems to have 
thought, the old and universal in the way of mental activity 
that is absolutely a priori; rather is it the new, the original and 
unique. 

It will thus be seen that the view which we have advocated 
in this chapter, and which has been shown, we think, to be 
not only defensible, but also, in the light of data alreadj^ avail- 
able, well-nigh demonstrable, avoids the absolute genetic 
dualism of the Kantian doctrine on the one side and the two 
corresponding forms of absolute monism, the rationalistic 
and the empirical (or the nativistic and empiriogenetic), on 
the other. It retains a fundamentally empirical and scientific 
point of view, but does justice to the activistic view of mind, 
emphasis upon which was the great merit of rationalism. The 
position, which may thus be very appropriately styled critical 
empirical genetic monism, or critical monism in genetic logic, 
once successfully defended, finally secures the position taken 
in our discussion of the problem of acquaintance, viz. critical 
realistic epistemological monism, or critical monism in episte- 
mology proper. With this accomplished we may turn our 
attention from the problems of immediate knowledge to such 
problems as may arise in connection with the subject of mediate 
knowledge. 



PART II: THE PROBLEM OF MEDIATE 
KNOWLEDGE 

A. THE PROBLEM OF TRUTH (LOGICAL 
THEORY) 



CHAPTER XVII 
A Critique op Intellectualism 

The more formidable part of our undertaking may now, 
perhaps, be regarded as accomplished. But to have vindicated 
the fact of acquaintance with reality is not to have treated 
adequately the problem of knowledge. Besides the problem of 
immediate knowledge, there is the problem of mediate knowl- 
edge. If knowledge is to be communicated and to become a 
social possession, or even if it is to be stored up in the most 
effective manner for one's own future use, it must come to 
exist in the form of judgments. But the claim to have knowl- 
edge in the form of judgments involves the twofold claim that 
the judgments are true and that this truth is certain, and 
justifiably so, to those persons whose judgments they are. It 
will be necessary for us, therefore, to discuss both truth and 
what is called proof, or the production of a sufficiently critical 
certainty of the truth. Taking these problems in their logical 
order, we shall turn first to a consideration of the problem of 
truth. 

Our discussion will be in the realm of logic as a branch of 
critical philosophy, or of logical theory, narrowly defined. 
The most elemental branches of philosophical criticism have 
to do with those ideals, or ends, to guide to the realization of 
which the various normative sciences have been developed. 
In the normative science of logic the ideal is truth. It would 
be claimed by some that the logical end is mere consistency, 
not truth. In the practical concerns of actual life, however, 
to make the end of our thinking mere consistency instead of 
truth is regarded as indicating a lack of earnestness or else pure 
stubbornness and such a selfish concern for applause and the 
appearance of victory rather than for victory itself as can only 
be set down as due to pronounced selfishness and as tending to 
intellectual dishonesty and hypocrisy. Taking logic, then, as 
2 b 369 



370 THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE 

the normative discipline concerned with the actual thinking 
of practical Hfe, we would regard the logic of consistency as 
only a branch of the logic of truth. It is the logic of hj^po- 
thetical truth and simply instrumental to the logic of actual 
or categorical truth. Scientific logic must undertake to show 
how to reach truth — hypothetical truth at first, it may be, 
but always ultimately truth, actual categorical truth. In 
critical or philosophical logic, therefore, we must undertake to 
solve the problem of the meaning of truth, the age-long problem, 
What is truth? 

Here, again, as in the case of epistemology proper, the prob- 
lem for later discussions has been set by the Kantian dualism. 
Kant, as we saw, set up an absolute epistemological duahsm 
between knowable phenomena and the unknowable independ- 
ent reality. Then, in order to bridge this chasm as far as 
might be, he had to introduce another dualism — an absolute 
logical dualism, according to which theoretical reason was to 
confine itself to phenomena, while practical reason might postu- 
late certain practically necessary behefs concerning ultimate 
reality. Thus, it was claimed, a part at least of what is intel- 
lectually unknowable is not only practically true, but prac- 
tically certain ; and yet, however true and certain, practically, 
it can never be other than in the highest degree doubtful from 
the standpoint of the theoretical understanding and pure 
reason. It is an absolute dualism of intellectuahsm and prag- 
matism.^ 

But it seems unlikely that it should have to be admitted 
ultimately that there are two radically and irreducibly different 
criteria of truth. And so two opposite ways of overcoming the 

1 In an interesting article entitled " Practical Success as the Criterion of 
Truth" (Philos. Rev., XXII, 1913, pp. 606-22), H. W. Wright goes beyond Kant 
and advocates three rather than two distinct criteria of truth, viz. intellectual 
consistency, technical efficiency, and emotional harmony. In some cases, he 
says, one criterion, and that one alone, is applicable as a test of truth ; in other 
cases any one of the three may be applied at will, while in still other cases it 
is advisable to use all three criteria together. As in the case of the morphology 
of knowledge (Ch. XV, supra), so here, to affirm a threefold distinction is prob- 
ably closer to a critically monistic position than is a mere dualism ; and each of 
the three criteria mentioned by Wright will be found to be recognized in our 
constructive statement which is to follow. But for the present let it be said 
that there is a strong presumption against there being three radically different 
criteria of what is in its meaning always one and the same. 



A CRITIQUE OF INTELLECTUALISM 371 

dualism have been suggested. One of these would reduce the 
practical to the intellectual ; the other would reduce the intel- 
lectual to the practical. The former we may call intellectualistic 
absolute logical monism, and the latter, anti-intellectualistic 
absolute logical monism. The term ''intellectualism" has 
been applied to the view that neither feeling nor practical 
needs have anything to say, properly, in determining the truth 
or falsity of judgments; that the criteria of truth are purely 
intellectual. In the present chapter we shall deal with the 
absolute intellectualism, considering it first in connection with 
absolute epistemological dualism, and then with the idealistic 
and realistic forms of absolute epistemological monism in turn. 
First, then, let us take up the case of the intellectualistic 
type of absolute monism in logical theory, as it appears when 
conjoined with a dualistic epistemology. Here we may begin 
with Locke, whose epistemology, as we have seen, was, at 
least covertly, dualistic. While still agreeing with the scholas- 
tics in their intellectualistic definition of truth — ''real truth," 
Locke calls it — as being the agreement of ideas with things,^ 
he found it necessary to introduce for the phenomenalistic or 
subjective point of view, another definition of truth as "a 
right joining or separating of signs; i.e. ideas [by which he 
means subjective contents of consciousness] or words." ^ 
Here, then, we see two mutually conflicting definitions of truth 
(although both are intellectualistic) ; and the significance of 
this failure to solve the truth-problem seems to be that either 
the epistemological dualism or the intellectualism is at fault, 
or else both are, for certainly if truth is either one of the two 
things Locke says it is, it cannot, on his presuppositions, be the 
other. 

£ln the system of Leibniz, which, from the standpoint of the 
individual consciousness, is an absolute epistemological dualism, 
truths of reason are defined in terms of the identity of subject 
and predicate (both considered as ideas, or both considered as 
things, or states of things), whereas truths of fact are held to 
consist in a correspondence between the succession of the phe- 
nomena, or the connection of the ideas or propositions in the 
mind, with the succession and connection of the things in 

* Essay Concerning Human Understanding, Bk. IV, Ch. V, § 8. * 75^^ | 2. 



372 THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE 

question.! Strictly speaking, however, there was no way of 
verifying the asserted identity of subject and predicate, con- 
sidered as things, nor of the asserted correspondence between 
phenomena and things, since all any individual ever experi- 
enced was supposed to be his own ''ideas." Consequently, 
for the maintaining of the above definitions of truths of reason 
and truths of fact, as well as for the defence of the assumption 
that metaphysical knowledge is possible at all, it became 
necessary to promulgate as a dogma, itself not only metaphysical, 
but essentially self -refuting , the notion of a preestahlished har- 
mony between all absolutely independent (non-interacting) indi- 
viduals, by one of them. And after Kant had developed the 
duality of appearance and reahty into an absolute duahsm 
more expHcit than that of either Locke or Leibniz, the difficulty 
of defining truth in any unitary fashion in terms of correspond- 
ence was still more keenly felt. The most telHng ammunition 
which Lotze had to use against the "copy-theory" of truth, he 
found in what he still retained of the Kantian duahstic episte- 
mology. We cannot copy, as it seemed to him, an external 
reality which, it is assumed, we can never immediately perceiveTj 

Among recent writers we may take as typical in this con- 
nection two who, as personal idealists, are shut off from any 
unequivocal epistemological monism, and so would naturally 
define truth in terms of correspondence, if they could, but 
who are compelled, by the absoluteness of their epistemological 
duahsm, to adopt some other expedient. A. 0. Love joy uses 
the term ''truth" as meaning agreement with objective reahty; 
but this objective reahty, qua physical, is defined in terms 
which would limit it, so far as we can ever know anything about 
it, to such contents of present and future experiences of think- 
ing beings as they themselves construct in common.^ In 
other words, truth is the correspondence of an idea in the 
narrow (ordinary) sense with an idea in the broader (ideahstic) 
sense. The idea of truth as correspondence of idea with inde- 
pendent reality is given up, on the ground that no independent 
reahty, at least of anything physical, is knowable. 

1 New Essays Concerning Human Understanding, Eng. Tr., pp. 404, 422, 445, 
452. 

'"On the Existence of Ideas," Johns Hopkins University Circular, March, 
1914, p. 66. 



A CRITIQUE OF INTELLECTUALISM 373 

Boyce Gibson's definition of truth has special interest as 
expressing an ingenious attempt to produce a unitary definition 
within the hmits of an epistemological duahsm, and yet with- 
out an entire abandonment of the idea of correspondence of 
idea with independent reahty. ''Truth," he says, ''is the unity 
of ideas as systematically organized through the control exer- 
cised by relevant fact," or, again, "the unity of thought as 
systematically organized through the control exercised by that 
aspect of Reality which is relevant to the purpose of the 
thinker." ^ The terms "relevant" and "purpose" are intro- 
duced out of respect for pragmatic considerations ; but, as will 
become more evident in the light of later discussions, the intro- 
duction of these terms does not keep the definition from fall- 
ing short of the essential thing in pragmatism; it remains 
essentially intellectualistic. It is interesting, however, as 
combining the realistic theory of truth, as a correspondence 
between idea and reahty, with the idealistic theory of truth, 
as the coherence of ideas among themselves. Thus, while 
Locke left the two incompatible definitions of truth apart, 
Boyce Gibson unites them in one statement — without really 
harmonizing them, however. The coherence theory we shall 
have to deal with presently, but it may be remarked here that 
while there undoubtedly are many unities of ideas, and while 
these may be formed under the controlling influence of fact, 
and even of "relevant fact," and while such unities, moreover, 
are hkely to be very useful instruments of judgment, and con- 
ducive to the learning of the truth, it nevertheless does not 
necessarily follow that this unity of ideas is itself the truth of 
any judgment in which it may happen to be employed. Of 
course, if one were to go over completely to epistemological 
idealism, he would perhaps find himself reduced to the necessity 
of accepting this coherence of ideas as the only available sub- 
stitute for an inaccessible truth; but unless he means to do 
so, Boyce Gibson is inconsistent in defining truth as both some 
sort of unity of ideas and fidelity to relevant fact.^ But, it 
must be acknowledged, the inconsistency is in his case obscured 
by the fact that, like all pluraUstic idealists, he is an episte- 
mological dualist only from the standpoint of the individual ; 

^ The PTohlem of Logic, p. 1. * lb., Pref., p. ix. 



374 THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE 

from the standpoint of the community he is an epistemological 
monist. But he has no logical right to shift the basis of his 
argument from one of these points of view to the other without 
explicit acknowledgment of the change; and this acknowl- 
edgment could not be made without the argument's lack of 
cogency and the untenability of the position being exposed. 

We shall now turn to an examination of the combination of 
an absolute intellectuahsm in logical theory with the ideahstic 
form of absolute monism in epistemology. We shall begin with 
Hegel. We find him making a distinction between mere cor- 
rectness, or truth as it is found in comimon Hfe, viz. the agree- 
ment, in the sense of mere formal coincidence, of an object 
with our conception of it,i and truth in the deeper or philo- 
sophical sense, which is said to be the absolute correspondence 
or identity of objectivity with the notion.^ In an ideahstic 
absolute epistemological monism this can be maintained, it 
would seem, because the object is interpreted as nothing but 
idea. Since in true judgment subject and predicate ''stand to 
each other in the relation of reality and notion," ^ the thorough- 
going ideahstic intellectuahst cannot even say that subject 
and predicate differ in that one is reahty and the other idea; 
the object which is the subject of the judgment being itself 
idea, truth, the coincidence of the object with its notion, re- 
duces to ''the coincidence of the object with itself,"^ or the 
"agreement of a thought-content with itself." ^ That is, the 
whole alone is what is true ; ^ only God or the Absolute is 
the Truth.'' But this means that in genuine bona fide truth the 
judgment disappears, and that by the cancellation of its sub- 
ject, i.e. reality as distinct from idea. But the truth we sought 
to define is a supposed quality of judgments. According to 
Hegel, however, no judgment can be really true. This is the 
logical result of taking mere identity of idea with reahty as the 
sole criterion and definition of truth, and persisting in this 
with the help of the ideahstic interpretation of reahty. 

One of the most thoroughly Hegehan of contemporary 

1 Logic, WaUace's Tr., pp. 51, 305. 2 lb., pp. 352, 354. 

s lb., p. 305. * lb. 6 75., p. 52. 

« " Phanomenologie des Geistes," Werke, II, p. 16; Eng. Tr., p. 17. 
' Logic, Eng. Tr., p. 3. 



A CRITIQUE OF INTELLECTUALISM 375 

thinkers is John Watson, and we find in his treatment of the 
truth-problem what is essentially the same doctrine with all 
its difficulties. In spite of the admission that truth exists only 
in judgments/ the account of the true idea as a ''copy" of an 
independent real object is rejected as untenable, however 
plausible it may seem on the ground that the so-called ''real 
object" exists only in the "true idea," so that the developed 
idea is not different from the developed object. The object 
is the idea, and an idea or object cannot be a copy of itself. ^ 
Thus, while we may say that our ideas have some low degree of 
truth, in so far as they correspond to or copy the "ideal object," 
the object as it is for "a mind that has grasped reality as it 
actually is," ^ we must admit, according to Watson, that "no 
single judgment is absolutely true." ^ Thus the position is 
seen to be self -refuting : it is surely not an absolutely true 
judgment that is asserted when one judges that no judgment is 
absolutely true. And here, again, we have the setting up of 
truth as an essentially unrealizable and self-contradictory 
ideal; the ideal judgment would be no judgment at all, for 
the subject would have disappeared in the predicate, or idea. 
It may be replied that in this Hegelian position, in so far as 
the idea of truth is retained at all, it is transformed from some 
sort of identity between the reality and idea into a relation of 
coherence between ideas as elements of reality. This coher- 
ence-theory of truth, resting as it does upon the untenable 
dogma of idealistic epistemological monism, is itself untenable ; 
and the signs of its untenableness will appear when we come to 
examine it in what is perhaps its most highly developed form. 
In the meantime, however, we must call attention to the self- 
criticism, or self-refutation even, of idealistic intellectualism, 
as accomplished by F. H. Bradley. 

Bradley, as has been noted above,^ was at first an apparently 
orthodox representative of Anglo-Hegelianism, but as he him- 
self says, if this view ever did satisfy him entirely, there came 
a time when it ceased to satisfy. However immanent in each 

1 Philosophical Basis of Religion, p. 159. 

^ lb., p. 160; The Interpretation of Religious Experience, Vol. II, pp. 67-8; 
cf. T. H. Green, Works, Vol. II, p. 258. 
' Interpretation, etc., II, pp. 69, 70. 
* Philosophical Basis, etc., p. 161. ^ Ch. VII, supra. 



376 THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE 

part, so far as he knew, the Whole might be really, he could 
not persuade himself that it was everywhere inmianent recog- 
nizably. And especially, on the principles of the ideahstic 
metaphysics itself, since thought is constructive of its object, 
the idea of any object supplements that object; one's idea of 
the Whole is an addition to the Whole. ^ Now it would seem 
that in view of these considerations Bradley ought not simply 
to have rejected the ideahstic doctrine of the philosophically 
demonstrable immanence of the Whole in each and every part, 
but to have at least suspected the fundamental principles of 
absolute idealism itself. He seems inclined, however, to throw 
much of the responsibihty for his idealistic presuppositions upon 
his German and English predecessors from whom he inherited 
them.2 

But while Bradley agreed with the ideahsts that all think- 
ing is reconstruction of its subject-matter, he refused to follow 
them in making that subject-matter in any case a mere product 
of thought. On the- contrary, he held that all judgment, in- 
stead of being the joining of idea to idea, is an act which refers 
an ideal content, i.e. a logical idea, a product of abstraction, a 
^'wandering adjective," the meaning of a symbol, to a reahty 
or existence which is beyond the act of judging, and not itself 
idea.^ In all this, we would hold, he was moving in the right 
direction, but he failed to reap anything Hke the full reward, 
in constructive results, of his break with Hegehanism, because 
he retained the idealistic doctrine of the necessary internality 
of the thought relation, and indeed of all relations, interpreted 
in the end as estabhshed by and dependent upon the process 
of human thought. According to this internahst doctrine, the 
ideas used in judgment quahfy the reality judged about, so 
that it becomes different in and through the very process by 
which the attempt is made to know it ; apperception modifies 
the facts which one sets out to perceive.^ Consequently it 
becomes necessary for Bradley to contradict what he regards 
as the really fundamental axiom of the judgment, to the effect 
that what is true in one context is true in another.^ This 

1 Essays on Truth and Reality, pp. 223-5. 2 lb., pp. 124, 246, 275. 

3 Principles of Logic, pp. 10-14 ; Appearance and Reality, pp. 163-5, 168. 
* Essays, etc., pp. 108, 227-30, 242. 6 Principles of Logic, pp. 133, 135. 



A CRITIQUE OF INTELLECTUALISM 377 

means that according to his presuppositions no judgment can 
possibly be true; the ideal of truth is self-contradictory. In 
the background of Bradley's thought there lurks the assump- 
tion, suggested perhaps by Jevons' doctrine of the proposition 
as the affirmation or negation of an identity, simple, partial, or 
limited,^ that the ideal judgment really would express an abso- 
lute identity between subject and predicate.^ 

But this ideal is, in view of Bradley's internalistic assumptions, 
logically unrealizable. Although absolute identity of the predi- 
cate with the subject would be necessary to the absolute truth 
of any particular judgment, this condition can never be realized, 
because some difference between subject and predicate is neces- 
sarily involved in all judgment whatsoever.^ ''There is still a 
difference unremoved between the subject and the predicate, 
a difference which, if removed, would wholly destroy the spe- 
cial essence of thinking." ^ No " truth '^ can be entirely true; 
every categorical judgment is necessarily false, and thus, theo- 
retically considered, a failure.^ Not only are all necessary 
and universal judgments regarded by Bradley — rightly, we 
would admit, or even contend — as essentially hypothetical ; ^ 
he claims that the same is true of particular judgments, and 
so of all judgments.^ If one's judgment is to be true as well 
as categorical, one must get the conditions entirely within it ; ^ 
and so we are driven to fill in conditions indefinitely, with the 

1 W. S. Jevons, Principles of Science, ed. of 1892, pp. 37-43. The view of 
Jevons, however, is fundamentally realistic, epistemologically speaking. • Brad- 
ley radically transforms the significance of the doctrine by assuming in broadly 
idealistic fashion, that, though the subject is reality, rather than logical idea, it 
is of the nature of experience, rather than independent reality, so that it is 
transformable by ideas, as independent reality would not be. 

2 See Principles of Logic, pp. 132-5, 344-8, and Appearance and Reality, 
pp. 167-70, 361-2. 

^Principles, etc., pp. 23-4, 131, 346-8; Appearance, etc., pp. 167-70. 

* Appearance, etc., p. 361. 

5 lb., pp. 361-2 ; cf. p. 396 ; Essays, etc., pp. 231-3, 251, 253, 257, 276. 

^Principles, etc., pp. 47, 49. 

' 76., pp. 45, etc. In his Appearance and Reality (p. 361), Bradley says he is 
now persuaded that it is better not to say that every judgment is hypothetical ; 
but this does not indicate any essential change of view. He still maintains that 
since what any judgment affirms is incomplete, it cannot be correctly attributed 
to Reality, except with a complement, and indeed one which in the end remains 
unknown, so that we cannot tell how, if present, it would act upon and alter the 
predicate. » Principles, etc., p. 99. 



378 THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE 

result that the categorical nature of the judgment is destroyed ;^ 
so long as anything remains outside, assuming the absolute 
internality of all relations, the judgment is imperfect and its 
opposite is not without truth.^ And so it is not permissible 
to appeal to designation, i.e. the use of such indications as 
^'here," "now," ^'this," ''my," in order to include conditions 
sufficiently for the making of an absolutely true categorical judg- 
ment; for the attempt to define these terms again drives one 
into an indefinite regress.^ There cannot even be a true cate- 
gorical statement of possibility, it is claimed; all possibility 
is merely such only because of our ignorance of existing con- 
ditions.^ 

This necessary failure of the judgment, when truth is con- 
ceived as absolute identity of subject and predicate, leads 
naturally to the formulation of the notion that truth is essen- 
tially coherence, rather than correspondence or identity. The 
realization of the ideal of truth could, on Bradley's presup- 
positions, mean nothing short of the disappearance of all 
judgment; the perfection of truth and the perfection of the 
reahty would be the same; what absolute truth would be, if 
there could be such a thing, is the coherence of all elements 
(which may indeed be thought of as if they could exist separately) 
in an all-comprehensive system, or, ultimately, in one super- 
relational, immediate experience.^ Ultimately non-contradic- 
tion, the criterion of system in the realm of judgments, is found 
to be realizable only in the absolute or all-comprehending im- 
mediate experience ; an object short of the whole tends naturally 
to suggest its complement, and since that suggested comple- 
ment is absent in fact, reality thus contradicts itself.* 

Bradley's position here is obviously self-refuting. He is 
not entitled to judge it absolutely true that no judgment can be 
absolutely true. In his latest work he says, "all ideas in the 
end, if we except those of metaphysics, lack ultimate truth." ^ 
But he has no logical right to exclude metaphysical judgments 
from his strictures on judgment in general, and in Appearance 

1 Essays, etc., p. 229. 2 76., p. 233. ' lb., p. 235. 

* Principles, etc., pp. 186-7, 191, 194; Essays, etc., p. 233. 
^Appearance, etc., p. 363; Essays, etc., pp. 113, 116, 210-11, 239. 
« Essays, etc., p. 241. 7 /^.^ p. 267. 



A CRITIQUE OF INTELLECTUALISM 379 

and Reality he more consistently ( ?) admits his inconsistency in 
the acknowledgment that even categorical metaphysical judg- 
ments are logically impossible/ and that in the end even "ab- 
solute truth" is not absolutely true.^ Thus in spite of his 
having taken non-contradiction as his criterion of truth and 
reality, he is forced into the most glaring self-contradiction. 
It would be difficult to find a more appropriate object than 
himself against which to direct his own remark in criticism of 
some of his opponents, that if one is willing to be inconsistent, 
he can never be refuted.^ It would be a more than dubious 
doctrine which allowed one to atone for the sin of his incon- 
sistency by a mere confession of it. (Moreover, Bradley seems 
hardly consistent with his doctrine that the idea is always, as 
idea, not existent, when he speaks of the idea as approaching 
Reality. How can what is essentially non-existent become more 
and more nearly the reality?) 

The strength of Bradley's position, such as it is, is found 
only in the dialectical skill and thoroughness with which he 
carries out the implications of that internalistic residue of 
idealism which he either had not the courage to throw over- 
board, or was brave enough to retain. He may well challenge 
his critics to do any better than he has done — with the same pre- 
suppositions as materials. All protests and ''refutations," he 
says, count for nothing with him, unless they can show that on 
the principle adopted the conclusion drawn is wrong.^ This 
empty dialectical triumph Bradley's critic may be quite ready to 
grant him ; his conclusions are not so much to be refuted from 
his premises, as to be avoided, if legitimately possible. We are 
not concerned to show that on his own principle his conclusion 
is wrong ; it is easier to show that his principle is itself wrong. 
Indeed this has been partially accomplished already. We have 
shown that the arguments for idealism are not only not demon- 
strative, but that they are essentially fallacious ; and we have 
outlined as an alternative a philosophj^ which is free from fal- 
lacy and adequate to the facts. According to this view apper- 
ception is not essentially a modification of fact, but a revelation 
of fact. The predicate is adjectival indeed, but adjectives 

1 Appearance, etc., p. 361. * lb., pp. 544-5. ^ Essays, etc., p. 235. 

* lb., p. 234. 



380 THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE 

are merely representational in relation to reality ; they are not 
constitutive of reality in general, but only of knowledge and of 
what we have called the tertiary qualities of reality. Moreover, 
it was pointed out that the internality or externality of relations 
is not absolute, but relative ; it depends upon the purpose which 
is, or ought to be, entertained. Bradley admits indeed the rela- 
tive externality of relations, i.e. their externality or indifference 
for certain practical purposes, while he denies their absolute 
externality.^ In this he is right, but when he assumes that 
all relations are absolutely internal, he is not right ; for, as we 
have shown, the whole question of the internahty or externality 
of relations is essentially relative to purpose. Relations are 
neither all absolutely internal and relatively external, nor all 
absolutely external, nor some of them absolutely internal and 
others absolutely external ; they are all relatively internal and 
relative^ external. All existing relations are — in their own 
relations — absolute, but their internality or externality to their 
terms is always relative, not to 'Hhis or that mode of union," ^ 
but to this or that purpose. 

But, further, as we shall see more fully in the sequel, similar 
considerations of purpose open up a way whereby particular 
judgments, if not universal judgments also, may escape from 
a merely hypothetical to a categorical status. There seems no 
sense in denying the validity or truth of a particular judgment 
which takes account of all the conditions that need to be con- 
sidered for the purposes concerned, if these purposes are what 
they ought to be. May we not he able to get absolute categorical 
truth into our judgments, if first we get the categorical imperative 
of morality into our ^practical purposes f It may then very well 
be possible to ''get the conditions of the predicate into the sub- 
ject," sufficiently for all the purposes which ought to he considered. 
Moreover, the injunction against ''designation" can be defended 
only on the basis of the absolute internality of all relations; 
if relations are not absolutely internal, non-contradiction does 
not necessarily involve all-comprehensiveness, the subject of 
any one judgment need not be "Reality" as a whole, but only 
some reality, and this may be adequately indicated by designa- 
tion. Once more, it is not necessary to reduce all assertions of 

1 Essays, etc., pp. 237-8. 2 Bradley, op. cit., p. 237. 



A CRITIQUE OF INTELLECTUALISM 381 

possibility to ''suppositions founded on our real or hypothetical 
ignorance." ^ It is not an untenable position, at least so far 
as Bradley has shown, to maintain that it is here and now possible 
for me — all conditions, whether known or unknown, being just 
what they are — to act in the immediate future somewhat 
differently from the way in which, as a matter of fact, I shall act. 

Bradley has not worked without some glimpse into this 
pragmatic way of escape from his theoretical difficulties. He 
admits that primitive thought was, and apparently also that 
ideal thought would be, absolutely practical,^ and he even goes 
so far as to surmise that what works must be at least partially 
right ; ^ but not only will he not admit the more extreme doctrine 
that truth is definable simply in terms of practical effects; 
he refuses even to concede that intellect is so essentially related 
to practice that its findings can always be properly subjected to 
practical tests. ^ His criticisms against current pragmatism 
may be largely sound, and yet the failure of his splendid system 
to solve the problems of truth and even of reality may very easily 
be due to his failure to appreciate the theoretical value of practi- 
cal considerations, as well as the practical value of theory. And 
it seems not unreasonable to suppose that Bradley, who at one 
time seemed so close to the pragmatic path, was repelled by the 
crude and uncritical way in which some of the features of 
pragmatism were anticipated in the writings of Alexander 
Bain. ^ 

The coherence theory of truth is championed by Bosanquet, 
who here as elsewhere tries to retain, in synthetic unity, the 
essentials of both the Hegelian thesis and the Bradleian antith- 
esis. He holds that the elements of the judgment are a 
subject in Reality, the meaning of an idea, i.e. its identical 
reference throughout all its psychical presentations, and an 
identity of content between this subject and predicate. The 
claim to be true consists in the affirmation of the meaning as 
belonging to the tissue of reality at the point indicated by the 
subject.^ 

1 Principles of Logic, p. 191 ; cf. Essays, etc., p. 233. 

2 Principles, etc., p. 32 ; Essays, etc., pp. 75, 91, 141. 
'Principles, etc., p. 343. ^ Essays, etc., pp. 79-89. 

^ See Bradley's Principles of Logic, pp. 18 ff. ; Essays on Truth and Beauty^ 
p. 70. « The Essentials of Logic, pp. 69-79. 



382 THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE 

This seems to mean that when the subject is the very same 
thing which the predicate means, i.e. persistently refers to, 
the judgment is true. But this definition surely takes insuffi- 
cient account of that necessary element in the judgment which 
makes so much trouble for Bradley, the element of difference. 
The result is what might have been expected. As with Bradley, 
the actual human judgment ^'has been gutted and finally 
vanishes"; ^ but it slips away more surreptitiously from 
Bosanquet's logical theory than from that of Bradley. All 
that is left is a single term, viz. ''truth" as "fact," or ''ReaUty," 
or "the Whole," viewed as constituted by knowledge, while 
the trueness of the forms of thought is their power to constitute 
a totality. 

But it will not do, Bosanquet apparently feels, to leave this 
truth existing or subsisting without any supporting judgment ; 
and so he invents "a, single, persistent and all-embracing 
judgment," whose content and product the "Truth" or "Real- 
ity" may be supposed to be.^ But no such judgment is, for man, 
either known or conceivably possible. It is purely imaginary, 
and we have no right to suppose that there is any such judgment. 
In any case, truth as an attribute of actual hiunan judgments 
has disappeared ; and, in order to distract our attention from 
our loss, we are exhorted to fix our attention upon the coherence 
of that one ultimate ReaHty which is constituted by knowledge. 
What Bosanquet would really be entitled to say, from his general 
philosophical point of view, is not that the truth of our judg- 
ments is the coherence of Reality, but that it is the correspon- 
dence of certain ideas of ours with the content of an Absolute 
Experience, which can never be the experience of us finite 
individuals, so that the test of truth can never be appHed by 
us. The fact is, with reference to this coherence theory, that 
it has taken one of the later tests of truth (coherence of judg- 
ments in a consistent system — a test which is vaHd enough 
within limits, but which can never guarantee more than hypo- 
thetical truth) as being itself the nature of truth — an error quite 
parallel, as we shall see, with the characteristic error of current 
pragmatism. 

1 Bradley, Principles, etc., p. 27. 

2 Logic, or the Morphology of Knowledge, Vol. I, p. 3. 



A CRITIQUE OF INTELLECTUALISM 383 

H. H. Joachim acknowledges great indebtedness to Bradley 
and Bosanquet/ and his point of view is not essentially different 
from theirs, except that he seems to appreciate, at least more 
fully than Bosanquet, the inadequacy of the coherence-notion of 
truth. He assumes that all relations are essentially internal,^ 
and so, partly on this account, gets into trouble when he tries 
to think through the idea of truth as correspondence, or identity 
of structure. There cannot be an identity of structure between 
the mental and the real, because if there is no difference between 
the two factors, there is no correspondence, but simple identity ; 
whereas if there is a difference, there cannot be identity of 
structure.^ He is willing to regard correspondence as a symp- 
tom of truth, but claims that it is upon something other than 
the correspondence that truth depends.^ What this something 
else is, he seems at a loss to say ; but, as we have hinted in our 
criticism of Bradley, and as will appear more fully in our con- 
structive statement, he would have been able to find it, if, in 
addition to discarding his theory of the necessary internality 
of relations, he had given some attention to that pragmatic 
theory, with reference to which he almost boastingly remarks 
that the reader will find no mention of it in his book.^ 

After paying his respects to the realistic theory that truth 
is a quahty of independent entities, Joachim proceeds to exam- 
ine the coherence-theory, according to which, as he says, truth 
is ''that systematic coherence which is the character of a sig- 
nificant whole," i.e. of "an organized individual experience, 
seK-fulfiUing and self -fulfilled." ^ But it is confessed that there 
can be only one such experience, and that is not the human, so 
that "the truth is — from the point of view of the human in- 
teUigence — an Ideal, and an Ideal which can never as such, or 
in its completeness, be actual as human experience." ^ No 
single human judgment, therefore, can ever be absolutely true.^ 

1 The Nature of Truth, p. 4. 2 75.^ p. 26. 3 j^,.^ pp. 24-5, 29. 

* lb., p. 17. 5 75., p. 3. 6 lb., p. 76. 

' 76., pp. 78-9. As against such absolutists as Bradley and Joachim, as 
well as against absolutely dualistic epistemologists, Schiller's remark is scarcely 
too satirical, when he says, " Unverifiability is the distinctive mark of a consist- 
ently intellectualist view of truth." (Journal of Philosophy, Vol. IV, 1907, 
p. 493, note.) 

• lb., pp. 104, 113. Joachim confesses, in effect, that he has "never doubted " 
that there is no truth but the whole truth ("that the truth itself is one and whole 



384 THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE 

But in that case even the judgment which embodies the cohe- 
rence-theory of truth cannot itself be true, and this self-refuta- 
tion of what he still regards as the truest possible theory of 
truth Joachim is himself forced to accept.^ We shall not be 
satisfied to share his estimate, however, until we shall have in- 
vestigated the possibilities of framing a non-self -refuting theory 
in still another way than any of those examined by Joachim. 

We shall have to examine the views of one more representative 
of idealistic absolute intellectualism, viz. Josiah Royce; for, 
in spite of his "absolute pragmatism," ^ this philosopher's 
theory of truth remains, as we will endeavor to show, essentially 
intellectualistic rather than pragmatic. Royce makes many 
concessions to the pragmatist, although, as we shall see, they 
all fall short of essential pragmatism. He admits that every 
judgment is a reaction at a particular time to an empirically 
given situation, a reaction expressing, and determined by, the 
consciousness of a need to get control over the situation. He 
also admits that even the most remote speculations are, for the 
man who engages in them, modes of conduct, and that the 
thinker's ideas are his own deeds, or at least his plans of action.^ 
But while maintaining that every opinion is a deed, intended 
to guide other deeds, and consequently that all truth is practical,^ 
he does not propose to take this practical characteristic of truth 
as furnishing, under any conditions, a criterion of truth; he 
adopts a criterion and definition of truth which are, as will ap- 
pear, quite non-pragmatic. 

But even more important for the understanding of Royce's 
theory of truth than his relations to pragmatism is his rejection 
of realism. His fallacious arguments for a non-realistic system 
we have already examined, but his criticism of realism is almost 
equally open to objection. Even in his first published volume, 

and complete") {The Nature of Truth, p. 178) ; but, as Schiller pertinently 
remarks, "Perhaps if he had been more willing, not necessarily to doubt, but, 
let us say, to examine, this assumption, he would not have been forced to doubt 
so much in the end." (Studies in Humanism, p. 167.) 

1 The Nature of Truth, p. 178. 

2 "The Problem of Truth in the Light of Recent Discussion," William 
James and Other Essays, p. 254. 

3 "The Eternal and the Practical," Philosophical Review, XIII, 1904, pp. 117- 
19, 141 ; cf. William James and Other Essays, pp. 223, 233. 

4 Sources of Religious Insight, pp. 145-6. 



A CRITIQUE OF INTELLECTUALISM 385 

on the ground that, as he alleges, common sense does not know 
what error is, he says, **Let common sense not disturb us, then, 
in our further search." ^ Against this summary procedure it is 
sufficient to remark that if common sense, without the pragmatic 
criterion, is unable to say what error is, it does not follow that 
common sense, with the pragmatic criterion, might not be able to 
furnish the desired solution. Moreover, in his treatment of 
realism, Royce commits the fallacy of assuming that the refuta- 
tion of a particular type of realism — and that a very extreme 
and indefensible kind — is a sufficient refutation of all realism. 
He assumes that realism must be absolutely dualistic in episte- 
mology, completely sundering the what from the that,^ and 
even supposing that what one mentally constructs and discovers 
as thus constructed, existed prior to that construction.^ He 
also assumes that 'independently real" must mean not only real 
independently of the knowledge relation, but real independently 
of all relations, a pluralism so absolute as to deny that there 
obtain among real things any relations except such as are so 
absolutely external that they are not relations at all.^ It is 
small wonder, then, that a seeming triumph for idealism is 
easily obtained. 

Having thus, as he supposes, shown the impossibility of a 
rational defence of realism, the need of finding some way of 
reaching objectivity becomes imperative. We need to hold 
that the subject of our judgments is Reality, not our idea,^ 
and we need that the judgments which we need for practical 
purposes be also true of this reality which is not our idea.® 
What Royce proposes in this situation, as a substitute for real- 
ism, is to fall back upon what is given subjectively, viz. our 
needs ; ^ and it is this private need of his own, as a non-realistic 
philosopher, this need of constructing objectivity out of our sub- 
jective needs, or of finding it in them, that explains his seemingly 
rather patronizing attitude toward contemporary pragmatism, 
with its emphasis upon the theoretical value of practical con- 

^ The Religious Aspect of Philosophy, p. 392. 

2 The World and the Individual, Vol. I, p. 107. 

3 Philosophical Review, XIII, 1904, p, 125. 

4 The World and the Individual, Vol. I, pp. 112, 127-136. 
6 lb., pp. 95, 271-2. 

^Philosophical Review, XIII, 1904, pp. 126, 141. ? lb., p. 124. 
2c 



386 THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE 

siderations. What we need in needing truth is, at the very 
least, according to Royce, companionship in our thinking,^ but 
it is more than merely this,^ The need of the moment needs 
to be controlled, not, as the realist imagines, by an independently 
existing object, but by ''some universal expression of need — 
an expression that simply makes conscious what the need of 
the moment is trying, after all, to be." ^ Our need of truth is a 
need of an insight such as would remain invariant for every 
additional point of view ; ^ and this, it is assumed, can only 
mean one^s own true self, including within its experience all 
possible points of view, and knowing that it includes them.^ 
Thus we need, it is claimed, the Absolute Self, other than our 
present finite self, as an actually and eternally existent Judge, 
if we are to have truth. ^ Indeed, one's true Self, as such an 
Absolute Judge, must exist, if there is to he truth, whether 
known by any finite self or not ; and this being so, there cannot 
be error, ^ or even ignorance,^ without the true, all-inclusive 
Self as Absolute Judge. 

Royce confesses that it is his voluntarism that is the secret 
of his absolutism ; ^ but, in the light of what has been said, it 
would perhaps be truer to say that it is his provisional subjec- 
tive idealism that drives him to take up voluntarism and to 
develop it in the direction of absolutism, a solipsism of the 
Absolute Self, as the only logical escape from a solipsism of the 
finite self. We ''acknowledge" a transcendent, truth-know- 
ing Absolute; we "define" the Eternal; ^^ we "appeal to" an 
all-comprehending insight ; ^^ and the meaning of all this is 
that we need the belief in such an Absolute, and so we deliber- 
ately take it, not tentatively as a working hypothesis, as the 
pragmatist might do, but absolutely and outright, as if it were 
our indispensable possession. 

1 Philosophical Review, XIII, 1904, pp. 126, 135. 

2 lb., p. 138. 3 lb., p. 131. 4 ijj^^ p. 140. 

5 lb., pp. 140-2 ; William James and Other Essays, p. 236. 

6 Philosophical Review, XIII, 1904, pp. 135-6, 138. 

7 Religious Aspect of Philosophy, pp. 393, 424-7 ; Studies of Good and Evil, 
p. 165. 

8 The Conception of God, pp. 28-9 ; William James and Other Essays, p. 237. 
® William James and Other Essays, p. 235. 

10 76., p. 236. 

" Sources of Religious Insight, p. 137. 



A CRITIQUE OF INTELLECTUALISM 387 

Now it is true enough that, because we come to know things 
through experience, we naturally remember them as they were 
experienced, and imagine what we have not experienced as it 
would be, if experienced.^ In this sense we do indeed appeal 
to experience, even when we refer beyond our own present 
experience. But what we must not forget is that what we 
intend to appeal to is not what the thing is experienced as, but 
what it would he experienced as, if it were experienced. The 
superhuman experience is, so far as these necessities of thought 
are concerned, simply a '^regulative," not a ''constitutive" 
concept. What the dogmatizing rationalist does, however, is to 
substitute for the "would be . . . if," a simple "is," or an 
authoritative "must be" ; and so deft is he in his logical leger- 
demain that his trick imposes even upon himself, and he con- 
cludes that the all-inclusive experience of the Absolute Self 
actually is and must he. It is true enough that something 
besides our subjective practical needs underlying our judg- 
ments is needed as the foundation and measure of their claim 
to truth; but what is needed is not necessarily superhuman 
truth — although we would not argue that there is none — 
but independently existing reality, accessible, under whatever 
conditions, to human experience and knowledge. 

Royce, however, having rejected all such realism, and having 
consequently, after the fashion of logical idealists, confused 
the concept of truth with that of reality, is compelled to pur- 
sue the course we have just outlined. And in so doing, we 
must insist, while he still refuses the most essential and valu- 
able element in current pragmatism, he acts upon, and really 
adopts in principle, the most logically vicious element in what 
we shall call pseudo-pragmatism.^ Having first gotten him- 
self, by a philosophical mistake, into unnecessary difficulties, 
he finds that the only thing that will save him from the neces- 
sity of retracing his steps and acknowledging the error of his 
ways is to assume the truth of an unverifiable proposition 

1 What do I mean by the object of which I know that I am ignorant ? Dewey 
would say,, presumably, a future content of my own experience ; and Royce, a 
present (or super-temporal) experience of the Absolute. But why "future"? 
Why "super-temporal"? Why "of the Absolute"? And why "experience"? 
What I mean is a present reality, of which, in some cases, I may have future 
experience. 2 gee Ch. XVIII, infra. 



388 THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE 

(that an Absolute, such as he depicts, exists) ; he therefore 
naturally ''wills to believe" it, and immediately does so, argu- 
ing its certainty from its necessity, forgetting that the neces- 
sity is itself quite artificial and unnecessary. Royce criticises 
current pragmatism for its tendency to lapse into this pseudo- 
pragmatism as a doctrine, "identifying the truth of an asser- 
tion with one's own individual interest in making the asser- 
tion";^ but he himself seems to have done the same thing, 
not in theory, but in practice. His "absolute pragmatism" 
is a necessary theoretical veil to hide the absolute pseudo-prag- 
matism of his actual procedure in this particular instance. 

And what are the consequences of this making of agreement 
with the judgment of the absolute, all-knowing Judge the 
criterion of truth ? Evidently, that even if we avoid Bradley's 
conclusion that we can never possess the truth, we are not 
able, logically, to say that we know that we have it, because 
the standard of measurement is inaccessible. The completely 
integrated experience of the Absolute the individual man never 
gets before him ; ^ and since the only workings by which our 
assertions can be adequately judged are "their workings as 
experienced and estimated from the point of view of such a 
larger life," ^ the agnostic conclusion is logically inevitable. 
In spite of the assertion that the Absolute Experience is the 
experience of my true self, it remains a fact that I, the finite 
self, do not experience it. And indeed Royce seems to admit 
that the knowledge we get, such as it is, by adopting his abso- 
lutistic criterion is a knowledge of our own ignorance. ^ And 
if attention be called to the fact that this completely agnostic 
conclusion is untenable and must be given up, it ought to be 
sufficiently obvious that this can only mean that the absolutistic 
doctrine of the criterion of human truth has been shown to be 
self-refuting. 

But, strange as it may seem, Royce has no intention of mak- 
ing any such admission. Unlike Bradley, who consistently 
acknowledges the necessary inconsistency of his absolutistic 
position, Royce argues, against the logic of his position, that 

1 William James and Other Essays, p. 232. 

2 Sources of Religious Insight, p. 148. ^ lb., p. 149. 

4 The Conception of God, pp. 28-9 ; William James and Other Essays, p. 237. 



A CRITIQUE OF INTELLECTUALISM 389 

even he who has adopted the absolutist criterion can have 
absolute knowledge of absolute truth, because, as a matter of 
fact, he has such knowledge in all propositions which are such 
that to deny them is to assert them under a new form.^ What 
he has overlooked here is the fact (as we would contend it is) 
that even these '^ absolute truths" are reached, not by the 
absolutistic, but by a humanistic criterion. 

That in his own thinking he is really guided by some more 
workable principle than is to be found in his own theory is 
increasingly evident as we look further into his discussion of 
absolute truths. While it is claimed that in the realm of pure 
logic and pure mathematics absolute truths are accessible,^ 
it is admitted that all such propositions are essentially hypo- 
thetical;^ ^'absolute truth is not accessible to us in the em- 
pirical world." ^ And yet he seems to teach also that some 
absolute categorical truth concerning reality is derivable from 
these universal hypothetical truths. Hypothetical judgments, 
it is claimed, give us negative information about the real world,^ 
and in the end they tell us indirectly what is, by telling us what 
is not.® Moreover, they give us positive and categorical abso- 
lute truth about the nature of the creative will that thinks the 
truth.^ Indeed Royce seems to have intimations of a wider 
field of accessible absolute truths, when he says that, in view 
of the irrevocableness of every past deed, every act of judgment 
that calls for a deed is irrevocably (and so, absolutely) true 
or false. ^ This last seems to be true only on the essentially 
pragmatic principle that judgments which satisfy every rele- 
vant practical purpose that ought to be considered (the pur- 
pose of the scientist, which is ultimately practical, being in- 
cluded) are really, and therefore absolutely, true; but this is 
very far from being consistent with Royce's absolutistic theory 
of the criterion of truth. Furthermore, much of the appear- 
ance of contradiction in the above-cited doctrines, first of the 
purely hypothetical character, and then of the essentially 

1 William James and Other Essays, pp. 239, 244. 2 75.^ pp. 212, 251. 

3 76., p. 239 ; cf. The World and the Individual, Vol. I, p. 276. 

* William James, etc., p. 249. 

' The World and the Individual, Vol. I, p. 274. 

6 76., p. 277. 7 William James, etc., pp. 247-8. 

' Sources of Religious Insight, pp. 154-7. 



390 THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE 

categorical character, of absolute truth, could be removed if 
only it were explicitly understood that this essentially prag- 
matic criterion might be employed. Universal truths are essen- 
tially hypothetical, until the conditions of the subject are 
included in the predicate, sufficiently for all practical purposes 
which ought to be considered; and then they become categorical. 
This pragmatic absoluteness of ordinary, humanly accessible, 
empirical truths, is the one thing needful to make Royce's 
''pragmatic absolutism" absolutely practical, and therefore 
presumably true. As it is, however, so far from his theory of 
truth being an absolute pragmatism, it remains at heart an 
absolute intellectualism. 

In the first few pages of this chapter we saw that when the 
intellectuaHst is an epistemological duahst, he tends to hold 
an idea of truth which would make it consist in a copying or 
correspondence or identity between idea and reality, such that 
ideally the difference would be simply numerical, apart from 
the fact of the one term being mental and the other (at least 
relatively to the individual thinker) non-mental. Such a 
relationship, however, is neither realized nor realizable in the 
great majority of the judgments which we are obliged to make ; 
the predicate regularly falls far short of the subject-matter; 
the idea, far short of the thing. But where the subject-matter 
is an independent reality, it does not appear that the predi- 
cate or idea could ever be known to coincide with the thing of 
which it is asserted, wherever the epistemological dualism is ab- 
solute. Evidently, then, the epistemological dualist is unable to 
solve the problem of truth by the way of pure intellectuahsm. 

We next turned our attention to the possibilities of a purely 
intellectualistic solution of the problem of truth, where the 
fundamental philosophy was an idealistic absolute epistemo- 
logical monism. What we found was that "truth," defined as 
absolute identity, numerical and qualitative, of subject and 
predicate, of reality and idea, was supposed to be discoverable 
in the subject itself, interpreted as a unitary system of all 
possibly coherent ideas, no one explicit judgment being left 
to be true. This, of course, fails to solve the problem of the 
truth of human judgments, for it puts real truth beyond the 
reach of man altogether. 



A CRITIQUE OF INTELLECTUALISM 391 

We shall now turn to a consideration of the possibilities 
of a purely intellectual solution of the truth-problem for the 
realistic epistemological monist. And here we shall see a 
course pursued which in the end comes to a conclusion which is 
the exact opposite, in some respects, of that of the idealists. 
Instead of finding the absolute identity, numerical and quali- 
tative, of subject and predicate, of reality and idea, by inter- 
preting the subject as a system of ideas, they would find it by 
eliminating the predicate altogether; they will have no true 
idea as numerically distinct from the thing ; only independent 
reality is supposed to be left to be true, or the truth. Whether 
or not this is the true solution of the problem we must now in- 
quire, examining certain typical expressions of the neo-realistic 
treatment of the problem of truth. 

A less extreme result of the union of realism and intellectualism 
than that with which we shall be chiefly occupied throughout 
the remainder of this chapter is seen in the doctrine of truth 
of the Aristotelian scholastics. In mediaeval times, where 
the influences of mysticism and of the philosophy of Plato were 
strong, idea and reality tended to be identified and the contrast 
between appearance and reality strongly accentuated; but 
where common sense and the influence of Aristotle prevailed, 
just the opposite was true : reality and ordinary appearance 
tended to be identified, and the contrast between reality and 
idea taken as an unquestioned commonplace. It was only 
natural, then, that the Aristotelian definition of truth, as the 
quality of a judgment which exactly represents the way in 
which real things are conjoined or divided,^ should also have 
been accepted, quite as a matter of course. The statement of 
Thomas Aquinas that "to know Truth is to know the agree- 
ment of knowledge with the thing known," ^ presented no diffi- 
culties, for while the realism was not carried to any one-sided 
extreme (as is the case in the new realism), on the other hand 
there was no absolute epistemological dualism to be tran- 
scended. 



^Metaphysics, Bk. IX, Ch. X, "He who thinks the separated to be sepa- 
rated, and the combined to be combined, has the truth." 

2 Compendium of the Summa Theologica, Pars prima, Ch. XVI. For the 
scholastics truth was adequatio intellectus et rei. 



392 THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE 

The representation of truth as independent reahty has been 
either approximated or actually performed by several of the 
American new realists, notably Perry, Montague, Holt, and 
Marvin. McGilvary's position is somewhat transitional. He 
has always avoided an absolute realistic epistemological mon- 
ism, but he has incorporated some of the dogmatic features of 
that view in his own system, so that we classified him with 
the others; he has failed to reach the most essential insights 
of what we have called critical realistic epistemological monism. 
His definition of truth consequently reflects the essentially 
transitional, and even unstable, position in which he has for 
some time been attempting to maintain his equilibrium. An 
idea is true, he holds, if its object is in the real universe ; false, 
if its object is unreal.^ At first this seems to amount to little, 
if any, more than the old scholastic adequatio iiitellectus et rei; 
it asserts that an idea (presumably an image with its mean- 
ing, since it is asserted that every idea corresponds to its object) ^ 
which represents a reality is true. Now this would be a toler- 
able definition of truth if in judging we began with the idea 
(predicate) and then looked around for a subject for it. But as 
a matter of fact our procedure is different; we begin with a 
given situation, some element of which is selected by a practi- 
cal interest, as the subject-matter of a possible judgment, and 
then we look for the proper idea, or predicate. There may be 
objects in the real universe such as the idea would truly repre- 
sent; but the question is whether this object, experienced or 
assumed as subject-matter of judgment, is truly represented by 
this idea (predicate). The logical idea, or predicate, is a ''uni- 
versal" ; that it is not the true predicate in this given situation 
(or, more accurately, the predicate in a true judgment concern- 
ing this assumed reality in this situation) does not mean that 
it may not, under some circumstances, have its place in a true 
judgment. McGilvary virtually treats the logical idea as a 
particular datum, and the reality almost as a universal. Trans- 
lated into terminology appropriate to the judgment as actually 
employed in practical life, his definition of truth amounts to 
no more than to say that, when there is truth, some reality is 
represented by an idea. But this, which may perhaps be 

1 Philosophical Review, XX, 1911, p. 156. 2 75, 



A CRITIQUE OF INTELLECTUALISM 393 

regarded as giving the proximate genus of truth, fails to state 
the differentia of the species ; an idea, or predicate, may some- 
times represent its subject, and yet not truly. Thus McGil- 
vary's definition is really more open to objection than is that of 
the scholastics; it does not provide for the adequatio as be- 
tween idea and the reality. In its original form it is signifi- 
cant, however, as expressing the neo-realistic tendency to find 
truth in reality, rather than in the judgment. 

Perry rejects the absolutistic account of truth ^ and also the 
current pragmatist identification of truth with the satisfying 
character of the practical transition from cognitive expectation 
to fulfilment,^ and signifies his adherence to the realistic form 
of intellectualism when he says that knowledge as true belongs 
to the context of reality, or, more conservatively, that it is 
verified by being found consistent with reality.^ It is proved, 
he claims, directly, in the elements and systematic relations 
of real experience, i.e. of independent reality immediately 
experienced.^ Truth is to be found in the thing known; it 
must envisage reality ; it not merely corresponds to its object ; 
the object plays the determining part in constituting the truth.^ 
In this way he gradually leads up to his rather radical definition 
of truth as essentially identity, or consistency, with reality.® 
Later, he says there is truth when a subjective manifold har- 
monizes with a manifold of some independent order, or, dif- 
ferently expressed, when a content of mind is rightly taken to 
be fact.^ If we gather these suggestions together, it seems evi- 
dent that Perry's thought has been moving decidedly in the 
direction of the view that truth is an identity of content in 
two different contexts, the one the subjective and the other 
the objective. 

Montague's definition amounts to practically the same thing. 
"When one content is the object of a belief, and is also a thing 
that exists, there subsists," he says, ''between the content as 
believed and the content as existing that particular form of the 
relation of identity which is called truth. To say that a belief 
when true corresponds to a reality means that the thing be- 

1 Journal of Philosophy, IV, 1907, p. 370. 2 j^,, p. 371. 

3 lb., p. 372. 4 lb., p. 373. 6 76.^ p. 374. 6 75., p. 422. 

^ Present Philosophical Tendencies^ p. 325, 



394 THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE 

lieved is identical with a thing that exists. . . . When we 
beUeve a thing that is a fact, our beHef is true/* ^ — and, we 
may add, this last statement is a mere truism ! Later Mon- 
tague says that the truth is the real, taken in a certain rela- 
tion, viz. as object of a possible belief or judgment. He claims 
that there is no more difference between what is real and what 
is true than between George W^ashington and President George 
Washington.2 

Holt speaks of two senses in which the term truth may be 
used, viz. first, truth of correspondence, or of identity of struc- 
ture between an abstract system and some more concrete 
system ; ^ and, second, and more important, truth as the 
mutual consistency of propositions.^ Here we have the realis- 
tic counterpart of the idealistic doctrine of truth as coherence. 
The judgment has disappeared, so far as the question of truth 
is concerned ; and, the difference between concepts and reahty 
being interpreted as only a difference of relation, the conclusion 
follows that the truth is the largest system of consistent proposi- 
tions.^ 

Marvin prefers to apply the term '' correctness,'^ rather than 
^* truth," to judgments, and this correctness he would define as 
the quaHty belonging to judgments which assert true proposi- 
tions. The term '' truth," which he thus appHes to propositions, 
he claims cannot be correctly defined in any way that does not 
involve a circle.^ 

This admission by Marvin is important for the criticism of 
other neo-reaHstic definitions of truth. Looking back over 
the previous four definitions we find that the attempt to define 
truth intellectuahstically, from the point of view of reaHstic 
absolute epistemological monism, leads to the identification, 
either explicitly or implicitly, of truth with reality; truth is 
reality, it is asserted, self-identical in different external rela- 
tions; and since any definition of truth must take account 

1 Journal of Philosophy, VI, 1909, p. 546. 

' The New Realism, p. 252. Montague holds that truth is of two kinds, 
immediate and mediated. The former obtains when in perception there is no 
distortion, either peripheral or cerebral ; the latter, when peripheral distortion 
is corrected by a cerebral reaction (ib., p. 292). 

3 The Concept of Consciousness, p. 37. 

* lb., pp. 279-80. 6 76., p. 339. « A First Book in Metaphysics, p. 28. 



A CRITIQUE OF INTELLECTUALISM 395 

of reality, for the neo-realist this is equivalent to the definition 
of truth in terms of truth, of reality in terms of reality. Of 
course, if there is no truth but reality, truth is not definable; 
as anything different from the facts and relations of objective 
reaUty, it has disappeared from the universe of discourse. The 
problem of truth is indeed a hard nut for the neo-realist to 
crack, because when properly conceived it implies a duality of 
idea (as mental product, an image with its function), and inde- 
pendent reality, a duality which is logically incompatible with 
an absolute epistemological monism. Neo-realism is conse- 
quently forced to treat ideas and truth in very cavalier fashion, 
with the resulting insoluble problem and the convenient ambi- 
guities that we have seen. 

J. E. Boodin's doctrine of truth is more pragmatic than 
that of other American realists. Not only does he contend that 
truth is sought from practical motives ^ and is instrumental ; ^ 
even though he insists that the nature and test of truth ^ are 
not to be confused with the practical motive which leads to 
the seeking of it,^ he offers, with reference to real objects, 
definitions of truth that are more pragmatic than intellectual- 
istic.^ His ideal for truth, however, seems to be intellectual- 
istic. What thought really means, he says, is identification.® 
Truth, or the validity of an idea or belief, he defines as the 
agreement or tallying of that idea with its reality.^ It is only 
because our description can never give the complete equivalent 
of real objects, and because so much of our thought is merely 
symbolical, that he is forced, in certain cases, to go beyond this 
simple intellectualistic conception of truth.^ 

But when we consider that in typical judgment the subject 
is some real object, Boodin's would-be simple intellectualism 
and enforced pragmatism really signify the breakdown of the 
former theory. The attempt is made, however, to save a shred 
at least of intellectualism, when it is claimed that whenever our 
knowledge is concerned with social and ideal structures, it 
comes to share in the ideas it would represent, and so it is 
no longer of reality, but is reality. Its copying of the object is 

1 Truth and Reality, p. 216. 2 76., pp. 123-4, 184, 217-18. 

3 lb., pp. 195-7. « lb., pp. 103, 210-11, 224. ^ 75., pp. 133, 219, 236. 

« lb., pp. 98-9. 7 75.^ pp. 210-11, 214, 234. ^ lb., pp. 214, 219. 



396 THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE 

a reproducing of it; the knowing process, when it deals with 
psychological unities, is the nature of the object.^ But at this 
point Boodin's thought does not quite accurately represent 
the facts. When the object of a knowing process is itself a 
knowing process, it is ordinarily not the same knowing pro- 
cess; and, as we have seen,^ it is a much debated question 
whether there ever can be a knowing process which knows itself. 
Or, to speak logically rather than psychologically, in terms of 
ideas rather than in terms of knowing processes, even when 
B's judgment has for its subject A's whole judgment, then B's 
judgment, hke all other judgments, must be to the intellectual- 
ist either tautologous or not quite true; for judgments, and 
even general facts of impHcation, are judged about by means 
of predicates which are themselves, as predicates, not facts 
but logical ideas, so that the relation of predicate to subject 
cannot be one of exact identity. But if what is meant is that 
B's judgment has for its subject the same reahty as was taken 
as subject of A's judgment, and if B predicates of this same 
subject exactly the same idea (in the sense in which ideas of 
different persons can be the same) as A predicated, then B's 
judgment may be said to be identical with A's (except that it 
is B's rather than A's) ; but the identity is not the truth, for the 
supposed identity is not, like the relation we call truth, between 
the subject and the predicate of the judgment; it is between 
two judgments. It is thus found impracticable to deal in 
purely intellectual istic fashion with even the small corner of 
truth which Boodin has sought to reserve for such treatment. 
Among the English new reaHsts Bertrand Russell is the only 
one whose theory of truth should concern us. S. Alexander's 
statement that there is truth whenever the mind works so as 
to be in the presence of objects in the order and arrangement 
in which they exist,^ amounts to httle more than that there is 
truth whenever the mind works so as to give it. Russell's 
theory is elaborated at length, but in the end it looks like the 
last stand of a retreating and practically defeated intellectual- 
ism. He speaks of coherence as being often an important test 
of truth, but he cannot regard it as affording any infallible 

1 Truth and Reality, pp. 219-21, 223. 2 ch. XIV, supra. 

' Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, 1909-10, p. 27. 



A CRITIQUE OF INTELLECTUALISM • 397 

criterion. 1 Indeed he disclaims all ability to find any universal 
criterion of truth ; and yet, strangely enough, in spite of this 
he still ventures to define its nature.- But it would seem vain 
to attempt a definition of that for which there is no criterion ; 
the proximate genus might indeed be given, but not the differ- 
entia of the species. Something true about truth might be 
stated, but not that which distinguishes it from falsity. 

As a foundation for his definition of truth, however, Russell 
describes the judgment, or belief, to which truth or its opposite 
applies, as being not a dual but a multiple relation of mind to 
its various terms or objects.^ He uses as his illustration 
Othello's belief that Desdemona loves Cassio. Here believing 
is a relation which unites the conscious subject (Othello) as 
one term to the other three terms, Desdemona, loving, and 
Cassio. Thus the constituents of a judgment are the subject, 
or mind, and several objects ; and so judging is quite like every 
other relation in that it unites a number of terms into a com- 
plex whole.^ These considerations are evidently intended to 
support a realistic absolute monism by showing that truth can 
be defined, if not as identical with reality, at least as identical 
with a part of reality ; it is a complex of terms related in cer- 
tain special ways to each other. 

But, when we come to examine RusselFs definition of truth, 
we find that it does offer (as we might have anticipated, in 
spite of his disclaimer), although in a somewhat covert way, 
and however inadequately, a truth-criterion; and we also 
find that the author fails quite to extricate himself from the 
time-honored view of truth as a dual relation. ''The judgment 
is true," he says, ''when the relation which is one of the objects 
relates the other objects." ^ This somewhat cryptic expres- 
sion, when translated into the concrete terms of the above 
illustration, means that Othello's judgment is true if the "lov- 
ing," which is one of the objects before his mind, really does 
relate the other objects, "Desdemona" and "Cassio." But 
this is as much as to say that truth is a relation of mind (with 
its ideas, or of an idea or complex of ideas in or before a mind) 

1 Problems of Philosophy, p. 193. 2 Philosophical Essays, p. 173, 

^ lb., pp. 117 ff. ; Problems of Philosophy, pp. 193-5. 

* Problems of Philosophy, pp. 197-9. ' Philosophical Essays, p. 181. 



398 THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE 

to reality, such that the relation which obtains for mind, or in 
idea, as uniting the terms, is the relation which unites the 
objects in reahty. But this is a return to that view of truth 
and the judgment which makes them consist in some sort of a 
dual relation between idea and reality, even if both the idea and 
the reahty are somewhat complex entities. Indeed in his later 
work Russell virtually confesses as much, when he says that 
correspondence with fact constitutes the nature of truth,^ 
and that a belief is true ''when it corresponds to a certain 
associated complex," ^ or, more simply, ''when there is a corre- 
sponding fact." ^ 

And so all the difficulties of the correspondence theory recur, 
and that because, as Russell confessed at the outset, there does 
not seem to be available, from the purely intellectuahstic 
point of view, any adequate criterion, which shall state the kind 
and especially the degree of correspondence necessary and 
sufficient to differentiate truth universally from its opposite. 
It will not do to measure the truth by the identity of the rela- 
tion between the mental terms and the relation between the 
real objects, even if there were no difficulty in conceiving that 
identity ; if the judgment is true, there must also be an identity 
or correspondence, the exact nature of which the pure intellec- 
tualist cannot tell, between the terms mutually related in the 
idea and the objects existing in real relations. For the con- 
sistent pure intellectualist, no true judgment can have any 
meaning, and no judgment which has meaning can be true. 
And in the case of terms and relations both, since there cannot 
be absolute identity between idea and reality, between predi- 
cate and subject, if there is to be any judgment at all, just how 
much identity is necessary for truth? To this question the 
intellectualist has no answer; he has no adequate criterion 
of truth. 

In closing this discussion of intellectualism we would sug- 
gest, as a counter-weight against the one-sided emphasis upon 
identity, the "new law of thought" formulated by E. E. Con- 
stance Jones. This law, which Miss Jones calls the Law of 
Significant Assertion, is to the effect that " any subject of predi- 
cation is an identity of denotation in a diversity of intension." 

^Problems of Philosophy, p. 193. '^ lb., p. 201. ^ lb., p. 202. 



A CRITIQUE OF INTELLECTUALISM 399 

That is, every significant proposition expresses a difference as 
well as an identity; if there is no difference the proposition 
is meaningless.^ 

But, while suggestive as emphasizing a relationship too 
Httle considered by most intellectualists in their attempt to 
define truth, this formulation does not make possible an ade- 
quate purely intellectualistic definition. In the first place 
the formula deals with the denotation and intension of the 
terms of a 'proposition, so that before its doctrine can be applied 
to the question of the truth of judgments, a certain translation 
is necessary. In the proposition, viewed as a dual complex of 
terms, the subject-term represents a reality existing independ- 
ently not only of this particular judgment, and of the prop- 
osition in which it is expressed, but independently also of 
its representation by the subject-^erm as well. Attempting to 
express this distinction in general form, we would say that 
the assertion that the subject is, or is represented by, the 
predicate, really means that that reality which is, or is repre- 
sented by, the subject-term (subject-idea) is, or is repre- 
sented by, the predicate (predicate-idea). What Miss Jones 
has shown amounts to no more, for our present purposes, than 
that the proposition which formal logic examines expresses 
the assertion that that which the subject-term denotes '4s'' 
the quality which the predicate connotes — the '4s" being 
taken, of course, not as expressing absolute identity, but in 
the sense which only the desired adequate definition of truth 
can state. The ''new law" may thus be regarded as virtually 
involving a process of deductive inference, representable by 
the following syllogism : That which the term (of the proposi- 
tion) A represents "is" (in the sense in which predication is 
valid) the term A ; the term A "is" the term B ; therefore that 
which the term A represents "is" the term B. It must be 
evident, then, that the change to the formal proposition from 
the act of judgment in which a "floating adjective" is afl&rmed 
of some reality does not remove for intellectualism, even with 
the aid of the "law of significant assertion," the puzzle as to 
the criterion of truth. The reahty denoted in the judgment 

^ A New Law of Thought and Its Logical Bearings, 1911 ; Proc. Aristot. Soc, 
1910-11, pp. 166-86. See especially pp. 166-9. Cf. ib., 1906-7, pp. 81-92. 



400 THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE 

which the major premise above expresses is numerically identi- 
cal with the reahty denoted in the judgment expressed in the 
conclusion, and the quality connoted by the term B is different 
from the quality connoted by the term A; but the question 
still remains as to what is the exact nature of that relation in 
true judgments which is expressed in propositions by the 
copula. How can the subject-matter, an independent reality, 
be the predicate, a logical idea? This is the question which 
intellectualism is forced to face, and which intellectualism by 
itself is unable to answer. 



CHAPTER XVIII 

A Critique of Anti-Intellectualism 

Some philosophers; in order to escape the difficulties of the 
intellectualist, abandon the idea that truth is attainable by 
means of ideas, and avoid scepticism only by falling back upon 
immediate feeling or intuition, while others, though they regard 
ideas as valuable for the attainment of truth, would not find 
this truth in any sort of identity between subject and predi- 
cate, but in the purely practical value of the ideas. The 
former view may be called anti-conceptualism ; the latter is 
that of current pragmatism. Both are forms of anti-intellec- 
iualism, so extreme as to be properly characterized as absolute 
logical monism; they recognize but one criterion of genuine 
truth, and that not the intellectuahstic. They may therefore 
be designated anti-conceptuahstic absolute logical monism and 
pragmatic absolute logical monism, respectively. 

Anti-Conceptualism 

The one great contemporary exponent of anti-conceptualism 
is Bergson. He points out that the conceptual mechanism 
of our ordinary knowledge, and especially of our ''exact" 
sciences, is of a cinematographical kind. Both our images 
and our concepts, the latter being the lighter, more diaphanous 
and easily dealt with, he likens to snapshots of the passing 
reality, which, on appropriate occasions, we are accustomed 
to bring before ourselves by means of the internal movement of 
our processes of thought. But the movement of our thought 
is another movement than that of the passing reality, and just 
as there is no movement in the snapshots of a moving object, 
so there is not in our concepts of the duration and life and 
movement and individuality that belong to the content of 
2d 401 



402 THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE 

immediate experience.^ Furthermore, according to Bergson, 
the categories we habitually use in thought are, relatively to 
the particular phase of realitj^ we may be seeking to know, pre- 
existing frames, into which the moving reality is forced, so 
that although we use them for purposes of knowledge, we are 
never able bj^ means of them to discover the real nature of that 
pre-existing moving reality .^ The platonizing attempt to gain 
knowledge of the real by means of an examination of human 
concepts is, therefore, to take an artificial and inadequate 
imitation for the original, a static substitute for the living and 
moving reality.^ The Kantian, too, although he takes the 
ideas as mere relations, is in much the same position as the 
Platonist, who takes them to be independent things.^ True 
metaphysics, it is claimed, is the science of reality which would 
dispense with symbols; it will soar above all concepts and all 
relations established by thought.^ 

Thus Bergson not only reacts from the intellectualistic 
attempt of logical idealism to find knowledge in mere ideas, 
conceptual predicates apart from any immediately given sub- 
ject ; he also rejects as an undue intellectualism the idea that 
the forms of intellectual apprehension, even when applied in 
conjunction with the immediate data of consciousness, can give 
us the truth about realitj^ He goes to the anti-intellectualistic 
extreme of looking for knowledge in the bare immediacy of the 
subject, apart from all conceptual predicates and apart from 
everything which may be supposed to have been revealed by 
such predicates. Bergson's course here is excusable, if at all, 
only from the point of view of the psychological idealism which, 
as we have already seen,® is the underground foundation upon 
which his system is actually based. If the reality existing in- 
dependently of explicit thought is itself essentially dependent 
upon consciousness, if there is no essential difference between 
"matter" and "images," ^ then the ideas brought to the sub- 

1 H. Bergson, Time and Free Will, pp. 115 ff., 228 ; Introduction to Metaphysics, 
tr. by Hulme, p. 67 (by Luce, p. 79) ; Creative Evolution, pp. 160, 305-6, 318, 
321, 329, etc. 2 Creative Evolution, pp. x, xiv, 48-9, 197. 

3 Introduction, Hulme, p. 75 ; Luce, p. 88 ; Creative Evolution, pp. 4-5, 48-9, etc. 

^ Introduction, Hulme, 83-5 ; Luce, 98-100. 

B 76., Hulme, 9, 21 ; Luce, 12, 26. « Ch. VI, supra- 

7 Matter and Memory, passim. 



A CRITIQUE OF ANTI-INTELLECTUALISM 403 

ject-matter in judgment are, to the interest in ultimately valid 
knowledge, a corrupting factor; the psychical cannot receive 
a psychical addition without undergoing modification. Not 
only is it true, as Bertrand Russell contends, in his critique of 
Bergson's philosophy/ that it is the idealistic confusion of sub- 
ject and object that has led this interesting philosopher to such 
paradoxical doctrines as that the brain is an unimaged image, 
that matter is the perception of matterj and that unperceived 
matter is an unperceived image, i.e. an unconscious mental state ; 
we may add that it is because of this same underground idealism, 
this idealism in disguise, that Bergson is forced to conclude that 
the only way, if there is any way at all, of reaching absolute or 
independent reality is to dispense with all products of thought. 
But this disguised psychological idealism is simply a disguised 
form of a philosophy based, as we have seen, upon fallacy. 

In place of seeking true knowledge by means of intellection, 
then, Bergson would have recourse, in metaphysics at least, 
solely to intuition. He distinguishes between sensuous in- 
tuition and a supra-intellectual intuition, and it is the latter 
with which he is here especially concerned. ^ For example, 
the true nature of the self, as of duration and change, is given 
immediately in our own direct self-experience, whereby, in- 
stead of merely circling about the object in conceptual flights, 
we penetrate into the very heart of it and view it from within.^ 
Supra-intellectual intuition is a sort of artistic sympathy, by 
means of which one seeks to share the inner life of the object 
he would know, and it is able to '^suggest to us the vague feel- 
ing, if nothing more, of what must take the place of intellectual 
molds." ^ From this point of view philosophy comes to be 
fundamentally '^an effort to dissolve again into the Whole." ^ 

This is not the place where an adequate estimate of what 
we may perhaps call the new intuitionism in philosophy should 
be attempted, and we would be far from maintaining that 
Bergson's doctrine at this point has no value ; ^ what we are 

1 Monist, Vol. XXII, 1912, pp. 343-6. 2 Creative Evolution, p. 360. 

3 Introduction, Hulme, pp. 1, 9, 22, 43 ; Luce, pp. 3, 12, 27, 51 ; Creative Evo- 
lution, p. 176. 

* Creative Evolution, pp. 177, 192-3 ; cf. La perception du changement, passim. 

5 Creative Evolution, p. 191. 

8 An excellent appreciation of Bergson's intuitionism is to be found in W. E. 



404 THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE 

here concerned with, primarily, is his anti-conceptuaHsm. We 
would maintain that the real value of his reaction against in- 
tellectualism is to be chiefly found, not in his negative, but in 
his positive, doctrine ; in his insistence upon the necessity of 
immediacy (and immediacy not simply of sense, but of higher 
types as well) for perfect knowledge, not in his assertion of the 
futility of mediation. In taking this position we are doing little 
more than to call for a repetition in our own day of what was 
done in principle when it was insisted that concepts without 
intuition are empty. But what is needed further is the com- 
plementary insistence that intuition without concepts is, at 
least comparatively, blind. Of course, as Bergson sees, to 
take the concept as a substitute for immediacy is hkely to 
mean an impoverishment of knowledge ; but properly selected 
concepts, properly used, in addition to immediacy, mean an 
enrichment of knowledge, and, it may be, as in the case of 
tertiary qualities and relations, an enrichment of reality itself ; 
just as the perception of physical reality is its consummation, 
not its mutilation. Moreover, in further criticism of the doc- 
trine of intuition in the system before us, we would ask, espe- 
cially in view of the too idealistic doctrine that mere thought 
not only sometimes can, but always does, corrupt the purity 
of ultimate being, does Bergson make sufficient provision against 
the doubt whether, even in what he cites as instances of intui- 
tive awareness, we really do attain to absolute reality, as he 
contends that we do ? ^ May there not be, even here, some 
residue of undetected intellection ? 

Bergson recognizes, of course, the practical function of 
intellection. He recognizes that we attach to objects various 
concepts, which prescribe the kind of action or attitude the 
object ought to suggest to us under different circumstances,^ 
and indeed, that for practical purposes abstract ideas are not 
only convenient, but indispensable, as substitutes for intui- 
tion ; ^ but he warns against mistaking familiarity with a 
concept, through habitual use, for clarity of insight,^ and 

Hocking's article, "The Significance of Bergson," Yale Review, N.S., Vol. Ill, 
1914, pp. 303-26. 1 Introduction, Luce, pp. 4, 10, 12. 

* 76., p. 49 ; Creative Evolution, pp. 12, 44, etc. 

» Introduction, Luce, pp. 23, 59, 64. *Ih., p. 101. 



A CRITIQUE OF ANTI-INTELLECTUALISM 405 

stigmatizes the supposed truth of our practically justified judg- 
ments as merely relative, and ''no more than a symbolic verity." ^ 
Concepts cannot give us true knowledge, but only a practical 
substitute for it ; even of science the function is not to show us 
the essence of things, but to furnish us with the best means of 
acting on them.^ Inasmuch, then, as Bergson sets up so radi- 
cal an antithesis between genuine truth and practical value, 
he is to be regarded as an anti-pragmatist, as well as an anti- 
intellectualist. 

Perhaps the most serious difficulty encountered by the Berg- 
sonian philosophy is met when attention is called to the fact 
that it attempts to exercise the elementary right of all philos- 
ophy to take shape as an explicit and coherent doctrine. Our 
philosopher claims that any true metaphysic must get beyond 
and dispense with concepts ; and yet, in so far as he states his 
own metaphysical position, he is forced to make use of concepts. 
He is himself well aware of this, of course; and at this point 
he advances a compromise doctrine. Metaphj^sics is wholly 
itself, he claims, only if it frees itself from the inflexible, ever- 
ready concepts, and constructs concepts entirely different from 
thesg — pliant, mobile, almost fluid representations, capable 
of following reality in all its twists and turns, ever ready to 
adapt themselves to, and to pictorially suggest, the fleeting 
forms of intuition.^ In illustration of this distinction two prop- 
ositions are cited : ''The child becomes the man," and "There 
is becoming from the child to the man." Here "becomes" is 
represented as masking the movement of the reality, while 
in the second proposition, "becoming," being the subject, comes 
to the front as the reality itself, so that "we now have to do 
with the objective movement itself, and no longer with its 
cinematographical imitation." ^ 

But this compromise in order to avoid self-refutation can 
hardly be considered successful. Bergson does valuable work, 
indeed, in criticism of some of our metaphysical concepts, but 
in doing so he perforce substitutes for them others which either 
represent the subject-matter more accurately, or else are still 

1 Creative Evolution, p. 196. « 75^^ p^ 93^ 

, 3 Introduction, Hulme, pp. 21-2, 69-70 ; Luce, pp. 26-7, 82. 
* Creative Evolution, p. 313. 



406 THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE 

more highly metaphorical, more sketchy and symbolic. It is 
not that we object particularly to this procedure ; some of our 
most valuable knowledge is contained in metaphorical judg- 
ments. What we know with is always necessarily somewhat 
different from what we know, as well as in some sense identical 
with it: and there may very well be an advantage, theoreti- 
cally as well as practically, if time, which we immediate^ ex- 
perience as ''duration" — to cite Bergson's own favorite 
example — is sometimes thought of in ''spatial" concepts. It 
remains, then, that anti-conceptuaHsm violates its own prin- 
ciple in becoming a doctrine; obviouslj^ the only consistent 
course for its advocate — much as we may rejoice that, like 
the mystics, he has refused to be consistent — would be to 
cease to speak, or even to think, in which case he would be- 
come philosophically negligible. The fact is, however, that 
if you scratch an anti-con ceptualist you find an intellectualist 
who has become so thoroughly sceptical that he has begun to 
advocate the giving up of the effort to make a judgment at 
all. His former intellectual interest persists, however, even 
outside the limits of the narrowly practical; and so he goes 
on as before, multiplying concepts and judgments, in order 
that he may discover and communicate the truth. 

William James, in his volume, A Pluralistic Universe, gives 
the anti-conceptualism of Bergson an anti-logical turn. He 
claims that in view of the impotence of the intellectualist 
logic of identity, we must regard human experience as funda- 
mentally irrational.^ He tells us that, at a certain point in 
his thinking, he finally found himself compelled to give up logic, 
fairly, squarely, and irrevocably, so far as our becoming theo- 
reticallj^ acquainted wdth the essential nature of reality is con- 
cerned. Reality, life, experience, concreteness, immediacy 
exceeds our logic, overflows and surrounds it.^ And the credit 
for this notable discovery, as it seems to him, he gives to Berg- 
son, without whose influence, he confesses, he would not have 
been so bold.^ 

1 A Pluralistic Universe, p.211. ^ lb., p. 212. 

^ lb., pp. 214r-15, and Lecture VI, passim; cf. article entitled, "Bradley or 
Bergson?" Journal of Philosophy, Vol. VII, 1910, pp. 29-33. 



A CRITIQUE OF ANTI-INTELLECTUALISM 407 

Current Pragmatism 

We have thus been led to reject as unsatisfactory, on the 
one hand, absohite ideahstic intellectuahsm, at least in its more 
characteristic (epistemologically monistic) forms, because, in 
its account of truth, it virtually eliminates the distinctive sub- 
ject-matter of the judgment ; and, on the other hand, to reject 
both absolute realistic intellectuahsm and anti-conceptualism, 
because, in their account of truth, they virtually eliminate, 
each in its own wa}'^, the predicate. But if we assume that truth 
is a quality of judgments, so that both subject and predicate 
are required, what possible logical theorj^ is there, which may 
be expected to deal more fairly with both these essential ele- 
ments of the judgment? 

Now it is important at this point to note that the anti- 
conceptualist and all intellectualists who do not virtually deny 
what are ordinarily called ideas alike recognize the practical 
value and even necessity of the ideas which we predicate, 
although they do not deign, of course, to make use of this con- 
sideration of their practical value in discussing the problem 
of their truth. It may well be, however, that the stone which 
has been rejected by these would-be builders is to become the 
headstone of the corner in the temple of truth. At any rate 
this is the opinion of current pragmatism, which, without losing 
faith in the intellect, would restrain the extravagances of in- 
tellectuahsm,^ and which seizes upon the practicality of ideas, 
claiming to find in the function of truth the key to its criterion, 
and consequently to be able to define its essential nature. 

But the term '' pragmatism '' has come to stand in contempo- 
rary discussion for so many more or less widely different points 
of view, actual or imagined, that it seems highly desirable to 
raise the question as to just what is the essential element, or 
what the essential elements, in current pragmatism. On the 
one hand we have philosophical critics, such as Bradley, com- 
plaining of the ''ambiguity of pragmatism," ^ and popular 
writers expressing such criticisms as that ''if it is new, it is 
nonsense; if it is old, it is obvious" ; ^ and on the other hand 

1 Cf. Schiller, Humanism, p. 6. 

2 Mind, April, 1908, and Essays on Truth and Reality, pp. 127-42. 
«E. E. Slosson, The Independent, Feb. 21, 1907. 



408 THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE 

we have William James himself complaining that the pragmatic 
movement is seldom spoken of with clear understanding. ^ In- 
deed, some years ago A. O. Lovejoy undertook a classification 
of "the thirteen pragmatisms" ; ^ and yet, in the words of A. 
W. Moore, '^as some pragmatists deny belonging to any of 
these, it seems certain that there are more." ^ 

Perhaps the fairest way of at least beginning the answer to 
this question as to what pragmatism is, would be to try to 
settle it pragmatically. This will involve a certain measure 
of anticipation of results; but then, on the other hand, it is 
a method to which the pragmatist himself ought to be the last 
person to object. In pragmatism, then, what is the practical 
attitude? What does pragmatism really propose to do? It 
surely includes more in its program than the invention of ''a 
new name for some old ways of thinking." One of the younger 
members of the school has recently said, "The mission of prag- 
matism is to bring philosophy into relation to real life and 
action" ; ^ and probably all leading pragmatists would indorse 
such a statement. But just what such a "mission" means 
to the pragmatist must be inquired more particularly. And 
at the outset it ought to be conceded that pragmatism, at least 
as represented by the leaders, has not intended to make for 
greater laxity of thought, but rather to introduce a more scien- 
tific method into philosophy, and to arrive at a more scien- 
tifically accurate notion of the meaning of truth. ^ And since 
in all scientific judgment the predicate is regarded as a mere 
trial-predicate, and the judgment is made purely hypotheti- 
cally at first, in order that by acting as if it were true it may be 
shown by the manner of its working whether or not the best 
hypothesis was chosen, the pragmatist concludes that the true 
way of deciding the truth or falsity of rival philosophical theo- 

1 Pragmatism, p. 47. 2 Journal of Philosophy, V, 1908, pp. 5-12, 29-39. 

3 Pragmatism and Its Critics, p. 1. Another writer (Max Meyer, Journal of 
Philosophy, V, pp. 321-6) claims that while Lovejoy's "thirteen pragmatisms" 
are but different aspects of the same doctrine, we may well expect to find as 
many pragmatisms as there are pragmatists. 

* D. L. Murray, Pragmatism, p. 70. 

5 James, Pragmatism, pp. 51, 55, 65-6, 216-17; Schiller, Humanism, p. 105; 
Dewey, Influence of Darwin, etc., p. 269 ; cf. H. H. Bawden, Journal of Phi- 
losophy, Vol. I, 1904, pp. 62 ff. 



A CRITIQUE OF ANTI-INTELLECTUALISM 409 

ries must be to treat them as working hypotheses, and to judge 
them by the way they work. If the hypothesis has been thor- 
oughly tested, and has worked satisfactorily, it is not only use- 
ful, he claims, but true.^ According to Schiller ''pragmatism 
as a logical method is merely the conscious application of a 
natural procedure of our minds in actual knowing." ^ Of 
essential pragmatism this may be true, but whether it has been 
generally true of current pragmatism is another matter. 

Still, the pragmatist does not necessarily claim that all 
judgments that are in any particular sense subjectively or tem- 
porarily useful are true. It is the fault of the typical absolutist 
critic of pragmatism that he has a passion for expressing every 
movement and tendency in the form of some universal prin- 
ciple from which it might have been deduced, and it is his mis- 
take that he supposes, when he has refuted this principle, that 
he has virtually annihilated the movement. But mere essen- 
tial pragmatism does not assert universally that all that is 
useful, or that works, is true; it merely takes as its working 
hypothesis in logical theory the suggestion that the true test 
of truth is ultimately practical, a test of working ; and it sur- 
mises that there is no adequate and valid test of truth that is 
not ultimately a test of working, the results of mere specula- 
tion being problematic until verified in the experiences of life.^ 
As Schiller has expressed it, for pragmatism the truth or falsity 
of an assertion is decided "by its consequences, by its bearing 
on the interest which prompted to the assertion, by its rela- 
tion to the purpose which put the question." ^ The criterion 
of truth, according to Moore, is always ''the fulfilment of a 
specific finite purpose." ^ 

Before undertaking to elaborate further this essential prag- 
matism, or to examine further into its merits and deficiencies 
as a logical theory, it may be well to note just what more or 
less closely affiliated doctrines are distinguishable from this 
essence, either as falling short of it, or as going beyond it. These 

^ See Schiller, Humanism, pp. 91-2 ; Studies in Humanism, p. 154 ; Moore, 
Pragmatism, and Its Critics, p. 87. 

2 Studies, etc., p. 186. 3 Cf. Schiller, Studies, pp. 7-12. 

* lb., p. 154 ; cf. p. 192, and Dewey, Studies in Logical Theory, p. 85. 

5 In Dewey's Studies in Logical Theory, p. 372 ; cf. Pragmatism and Its 
Critics, pp. 14, 15. 



410 THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE 

other theories may be grouped together, we would suggest, into 
four main classes, which for convenience may be labeled semi- 
pragmatism, quasi-pragmatism, pseudo-pragmatism, and hyper- 
pragmatism, respectively. By semi-pragmatism is here meant 
any doctrine which undertakes to supplement acknowledged 
deficiencies of pure intellectualism by moving in the direction 
of essential pragmatism, but which fails to indorse the prag- 
matic criterion of truth. The term quasi-pragmatism we would 
use to designate the view that practical value is the measure 
of what, for practical purposes, we take, rightly enough, as 
truth, but that real truth is accessible only in some other way. 
Pseudo-pragmatism we would define as the doctrine that all 
practical value of ideas or judgments is an indication or proof of 
their truth.^ Hyper-pragmatism we would use as the name 
of the doctrine that in addition to the criterion of truth being 
always ultimately practical, the essential nature of truth, or 
trueness, is just practical value, usefulness, or the process of 
its working, its verification.^ Thus while semi-pragmatism 
and quasi-pragmatism assert less, pseudo-pragmatism and 
hyper-pragmatism assert more than the bare content of essen- 
tial pragmatism. 

Of the representatives of semi-pragmatism, i.e. of those who 
stop halfway on the road to the essentially pragmatic theory 
of truth, the most important in connection with the history 
of pragmatism is Charles Sanders Peirce. He is sometimes 
spoken of as the founder of pragmatism, but he would be more 
properly regarded as its forerunner. As early as 1878, in his 
now celebrated paper ''How to Make Our Ideas Clear," ^ he 
used the term pragmatism, but it was as the name of a doctrine 
not of truth, but of meaning. Claiming that the whole func- 
tion of thought is to produce habits of action, and that what- 
ever there is connected with a thought but irrelevant to this 
purpose is an accretion to it but no part of it,* he goes on to say 
that if we consider what effects, which might conceivably have 
practical bearings, we conceive the object of our conception 

1 F. C. S. Schiller has used the term "pseudo-pragmatism" in another sense, 
which has not gained currency. 

2 Paulhan uses the term "hyper-pragmatism"' (Revue philosophigue. Vol. 67, 
pp. 614 ff.), but in a different sense from that in which it is used here. 

3 Popular Science Monthly, Vol. XII, pp. 286-302. " lb., p. 292. 



A CRITIQUE OF ANTI-INTELLECTUALISM 411 

to have, our conception of these effects is the whole of our concep- 
tion of the object.^ Years afterwards, in Baldwin's Dictionary 
of Philosophy and Psychology, he defines pragmatism as 'Hhe 
doctrine that the whole 'meaning' of a conception expresses 
itself in practical consequences, consequences either in the shape 
of conduct to be recommended or in that of experience to be 
expected, if the conception be true." ^ The name pragmatism 
was chosen for this doctrine in view of its recognition of the 
inseparable connection between cognition and purpose.^ But 
in view of the ''extremes" to which, in his opinion, James later 
pushed the pragmatic doctrine,* Peirce, in order to register 
the more emphatically his dissent, proposed the name prag- 
maticism for his own more conservative doctrine.^ James's 
doctrines of the mutability of truth and of the will to believe 
seem to have been what repelled him most ; ^ but in drawing 
back in order to avoid these features of the later development, 
he was kept from accepting, as the logic of his own position 
might otherwise have led him to accept, the essential doctrine 
of pragmatism, viz. that of the necessarily practical character, 
ultimately, of the criterion of truth (about reality). The 
meaning of a concept is ultimately its mean-ing, its function 
of being a means to certain consequences ; but it may also be 
said that it is those consequences toward which the concept 
is a means. Peirce stressed the second of these definitions of 
meaning, although he recognized the other. James, as we 
shall see, went too far, going from meaning as consequences 
to truth as consequences, or the process of reaching intended 
consequences ; but Peirce was at fault in not recognizing that 
since meaning is to be told by the consequences to which that 
which has the meaning leads, and since truth is a judgmental 
expression of meaning, or a quality of that expression, truth 
also is to be told by its consequences. 

The great majority of semi-pragmatists are those who, like 
J. M. Baldwin, stress the practical function of truth, as ex- 
plaining its genesis and survival, but who define truth in purely 

1 lb., p. 293. 2 Cf. Monist, 1905, pp. 162, 481. 

3 lb., p. 163. * See Baldwin's Dictionary, article "Pragmatism." 

5 Monist, 1905, pp. 166, 481 ff. 
• ^Hibbert Journal, Vol. VII, Oct., 1908, p. 112. 



412 THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE 

intellectualistic fashion as mere agreement or correspondence 
with reahty. In his address on "Selective Thinking," ^ Bald- 
win seems on the verge of passing from semi-pragmatism to 
essential pragmatism; he says that correspondence between 
the idea and the fact constitutes truth, and yet he insists that 
a truth is not selected because it is true, but is true because it 
has been selected. ^ " But the mode of expression here was 
rather clumsy and inaccurate ; a truth is true, not because 
it is selected, but because it is fit to be selected. Consequently 
Baldwin was compelled to retreat from the pragmatic border- 
territory. In the Psychological Review for July, 1903, although 
he claims, in pragmatic fashion, that genetic theory explains 
''by what character judgments are true," he exphcitly dis- 
avows pragmatism.^ In his paper on ''The Limits of Pragma- 
tism," ^ "without prejudice to a thoroughgoing pragmatic 
account of the origin of the function of thinking," ^ he never- 
theless objects to the view that the environment is a mode of 
pragmatically determined reality, because it assumes the reality 
of mental function and development, and this in turn requires 
us to assume a preexisting environment.^ Since, then, we 
cannot have a purely active determination of reality,^ he con- 
cludes that the same thing must be said of truth. "The true 
cannot be interpreted entirely in terms of the requirements of 
conduct," ^ but is only definable intellectualistically as "the 
body of knowledge acknowledged as belonging where it does 
in a consistently controlled context." ^ But this conclusion 
is quite dogmatic, depending as it does upon a confusion of 
truth with fact. One might agree that the current pragmatist 
interpretation of reality is untenable, and yet without incon- 
sistency indorse the pragmatic criterion of truth. Moreover, 
Baldwin's definition, amounting to no more than that truth is 
acknowledging that something is as it really is, evidently labors 
under the difficulties which beset all pure inteUectuahsm. 

J. E. Boodin may be mentioned again in this connection, 
as being, although in a different way, a half-pragmatist in his 

^ Psychological Review, V, 1898, pp. 1-24 ; Development and Evolution, Ch. 
XVII. 2 75.^ p. 251. 

3 See Moore, Pragmatism and Its Critics, pp. 193-4. 

* Psychological Review, XI, 1904, pp. 30 S. » lb., p. 60. « lb., p. 40. 
7 Thought and Things, Vol. II, p. 350. « lb., p. 357. » lb., p. 361. 



A CRITIQUE OF ANTI-INTELLECTUALISM 413 

doctrine of truth. He tends toward even the extreme pragma- 
tist doctrine with reference to the nature of truth, when the 
subject-matter is some reahty other than a social intellectual 
product — although his reaUsm keeps him from going quite 
so far as some have done — but his doctrine of truth with 
reference to ideal structures is, as we have seen, quite intellec- 
tualistic and non-pragmatic. Truth in the former case is said 
to consist in ''the differences which objects make to the reflec- 
tive conduct of human nature, as in its evolutionary process 
it attempts to control and understand its world." ^ It cannot 
be regarded as satisfactory, however, to have two different 
definitions of truth, neither of which applies to all cases of true 
judgments. 

Royce's "absolute pragmatism" also falls short of essential 
pragmatism. His voluntaristic insistence that the idea is a 
plan of action, that the judgment is a precept, ^ and that any 
definite opinion may be compared to the counsel given by the 
coach to a player,^ do not go beyond an emphasis upon the 
practical function of truth. He nowhere definitely proposes 
to measure trueness in any sense by the demands of practice, 
and yet, to revert to the simile of the coach and the player, just 
as in the game the coach himself is on trial, and his advice is 
ultimately to be judged in the light of its consequences, so must 
it be with judgments generally, if, as Royce contends, they 
are all precepts for the guidance of action. Royce, impressed 
simply with ''the practical value of theory," remains on the 
ground of semi-pragmatism; he ignores "the theoretic value 
of practice," ^ and so stops short of essential pragmatism. 

One more example of semi-pragmatism — this again of an- 
other sort — is to be found in the "negative pragmatism" of 
W. E. Hocking. Rejecting the positive principle, "What- 
ever works is true," as being neither vaHd nor useful, he adopts 
the principle, "That which does not work is not true." ^ But 

1 Truth and Reality, p. 183 ; cf. p. 219. But see p. 236, where it is said that 
it is not truth, but its evidence, which consists in consequences. 

2 "The Eternal and the Practical," Philosophical Review, XIII, 1904, pp. 119, 
131. 3 Sources of Religious Insight, p. 152. 

* For these concise antithetical expressions I am indebted to H. V. Knox 
(The Philosophy of William James, 1914, p. 94). 

5 The Meaning of God in Human Experience, p. xiii. 



414 THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE 

we would maintain that even this negative pragmatism is 
unwarranted, unless some sort of positive pragmatism is also 
true. Of course, as we shall ourselves contend, we cannot be 
critical and say, "All that works is true" ; but it seems very 
improbable that we should be correct in saying, ''Nothing that 
does not work is true," unless it were also true that some posi- 
tive relation of importance existed between working and truth, 
that some kind of working might rightly be regarded as a 
criterion of truth. The negative pragmatist must go on to 
find an essential pragmatism of a positive sort, or else return 
to nonpragmatism, the doctrine that there is no dependence 
whatever of the truth of a judgment upon its practical 
function. 

We shall now examine briefly some representative statements 
of what we have called quasi-pragmatism, the doctrine that 
practical value determines the proper use of concepts and judg- 
ments as practical substitutes for truth. For example, we 
have Ernst Mach's statement that even in science our theoreti- 
cal conceptions, such as (those of) electricity, light-waves, 
molecules, atoms, and energy, are mere auxiliary instruments, 
created to facilitate some definite purpose, and that they possess 
permanent value only with respect to that purpose.^ Only 
experience is fact ; atoms, like all substances, are things of 
thought ; they are mere mental expedients, designed to fill out 
the gaps in our experience, which comes to us as if, but only 
as if, these things of thought were actual facts.^ 

Henri Poincare develops the same doctrine further, maintain- 
ing that the first principles of geometry and of mechanics are 
mere conventions, made to enable man the more conveniently 
to adjust himself to the changing facts of his immediate experi- 
ence.^ The Euclidean geometrj^ is not truer than non-Euclid- 
ean systems, nor is the Copernican theory truer than the 
Ptolemaic; the prevailing system is simply the more con- 
venient.^ By natural selection our mind has adapted itself to 
the conditions of the external world, and in doing so it has 
adopted the geometrical and scientific principles most advan- 

1 Analysis of Sensations, Eng. Tr., pp. 186-7. 

2 Science of Mechanics, pp. 490-4. 

3 Science and Hypothesis, Eng. Tr., pp. 3, 98. ■* 7&.,-pp. 53, 85. 



A CRITIQUE OF ANTI-INTELLECTUALISM 415 

tageous to the species, because the most convenient. Our 
sciences are not true ; they are convenient, advantageous.^ 
To Le Roy's doctrine that the scientist creates the facts of his 
science, Poincare objects ; but this is because, unHke Le Roy, 
he refuses to apply to atoms and similar scientific constructs, 
as he regards them, the name "fact." ^ In his opinion, all 
the scientist creates in a fact (a content of immediate experi- 
ence, a phenomenon) is the language in which he enunciates 
it; but this 'language" includes all the conventions of scien- 
tific thought; the scientific fact is only the crude fact trans- 
lated into a convenient language.^ In his Dernier es Pensees ^ 
Poincare adopts for his point of view the term pragmatism, 
which he defines as the function which an hypothesis has, of 
leading to consequences which are verifiable in the facts of 
experience. 

Hans Vaihinger makes a distinction between hypotheses 
and fictions; the former anticipate possible experience; the 
latter represent what can never be experienced, but what it is 
convenient or even indispensable for us, for practical purposes, 
to think of as if they were elements in possible experience. 
Thus the freedom of the will, atoms, independent reality, etc., 
are "indispensable fictions'' — pragmatically useful and even 
necessary, but not true.^ 

Closely similar to these views is Bergson's doctrine, in so 
far as it relates to the judgments of science and of common life. 
Intelligence, he says, is the faculty of manufacturing and using 
artificial objects, i.e. ideas, tools which may be employed 
to make tools.^ Especially with reference to life and action, 
our customary and scientific concepts can never be more than 
practically useful; they never amount to more than a con- 
venient substitute for true knowledge, which is accessible to 
immediate intuition alone.^ 

1 lb., p. 65. 2 The Value of Science, Eng. Tr., pp. 114-16. 

3 lb., pp. 120-1. * Pp. 146 ff. 5 j){g Philosophie des Als Ob, passim. 

8 Creative Evolution, pp. 1.39-40. 

' lb., passim. E. Le Roy's position is practically the same as that of his 
master, Bergson. Scientific laws he speaks of as "practical receipts," " not true 
but efficacious," which " concern less our knowledge than our action " and " enable 
us to control the order of nature rather than to discover it." Bulletin de la 
societe frangaise de philosophie, 1901, p. 5 ; cf. Revue de metaphysique et de 
morale, 1901, pp. 141, 560. 



416 THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE 

With reference to this quasi-pragmatism' three things need 
to be said; it is to be appreciated, to be adversely criticised, 
and to be explained. In appreciation we would say that this 
'^ scientific pragmatism," as some have called it, has the merit 
of suggesting a way of introducing the pragmatic criterion 
into the shaping of our judgments in a way that is strictly 
methodical and intellectually justifiable. It seems to give 
promise of a synthesis of the essentials of intellectualism and 
pragmatism in an intelligible and serviceable definition of 
truth. On the other hand, the criticism is that the judgments 
so constructed have, according to these philosophers, to be 
rejected as not really true, but only convenient, or practically 
necessary. At this point it is interesting to note how closely 
this quasi-pragmatism approximates the doctrine of Albert 
Schinz, which he calls '^ anti-pragmatism.'' Pragmatism, he 
says, will carry the day, not because it is true — for it cer- 
tainly is false — but because it is desirable.^ The truth is sad 
and dangerous, he thinks; from the social point of view, the 
false is preferable to the true. For practical reasons, therefore, 
Schinz proposes a philosophically indefensible dualism of a 
philosophic truth, independent of consequences, on the one 
hand, and a pragmatic ''truth" on the other, not really true, 
but the social philosophy of the people, and conducive to the 
well-being of society.^ But this dualism which Schinz boldly 
acknowledges, this opposition of the necessary and the true, is 
in principle implicit as a disintegrating element in the doctrines 
of Mach and Poincare, of Vaihinger and Bergson. And finally, 
the explanation of this theory of practically and even scientifi- 
cally necessary untruth is to be found in the more or less dis- 
guised psychological idealism of all of these philosophers. 
According to their philosophical presuppositions, there is no 
independent reality; but we need, practically and scientifi- 
cally, to act as if there were. Hence, it is inferred, we need 
to believe what is not true. If, however, we refuse to accept 
psychological idealism — and we have seen no good reason 
for its acceptance — we are saved from the unpleasant dilemma 
in which these philosophers find themselves, and are at the 
same time able to retain the suggestions they give us as to a 

1 Anti-pragmatism, Eng. Tr., p. 221. 2 /^.^ pp. 207, 250, 268. 



A CRITIQUE OF ANTI-INTELLECTUALISM 417 

pragmatism that shall be scientific, i.e. intellectually justi- 
fiable, in its procedure. 

Essential pragmatism is not content to say, with semi- 
pragmatism, that all real live judgments which are true are in 
some sense useful to the person making them, although it 
would say that, with certain qualifications as to the kind of 
usefulness meant. (Judgments which serve to express im- 
mediate appreciation of ends would have to be recognized.) 
Nor is essential pragmatism satisfied, as is what we have called 
quasi-pragmatism, to have judgments constructed in the light 
of practical criteria, if these judgments are to be regarded as 
merely useful, or even practically necessary, but not true. It 
insists upon some sort of practical criterion of truth. But the 
attempt to state explicitly the essential nature of pragmatism 
has led to over-statements, in which much more is affirmed than 
can be easily or successfully defended. These over-statements 
may be divided into two groups, one of which, hyper-pragma- 
tism, although it goes beyond what is necessarily involved in 
essential pragmatism, is nevertheless a quite characteristic 
doctrine of current pragmatism ; while the other, pseudo-prag- 
matism, cannot be fairly regarded as a characteristic doctrine 
of current pragmatism, although, as we shall see, many lead- 
ing pragmatists occasionally allow themselves to lapse into 
forms of expression which, if taken literally, manifestly imply 
it. In the main, however, it goes not only beyond essential 
pragmatism, but beyond current pragmatism as well; and it 
may be regarded as existing for the most part in the imagination 
of the critics and in the minds of novices in the study of prag- 
matism. 

This pseudo-pragmatism is, or would be, as has been inti- 
mated, the doctrine that all judgments that happen in partic- 
ular cases to be useful in leading to the fulfilment of any kind 
of purpose, or even to the fulfilment of thoroughly worthy 
ulterior purposes, are true; or, in other words, that all satis- 
factory judgments are true, simply by virtue of their giving 
satisfaction to some particular desire. Now it is at once obvious 
that at least two varieties of this pseudo-pragmatism are 
theoretically possible, viz. the doctrine that what is useful for 
some particular purpose is true universally, and the doctrine 
2e 



418 THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE 

that what is useful for some particular purpose is true for that 
particular purpose. As might have been expected, it is the 
latter doctrine that eminent pragmatists have not always been 
completely successful in avoiding. 

Indeed it must be admitted that WiUiam James has been in 
this regard one of the worst of the offenders. Even the insist- 
ence that pragmatism is only a method, and is indifferent 
to particular results,^ gives some ground for suspicion. But 
we read further that ideas become true just in so far as they 
help us to get into satisfactory relations with other parts of our 
experience ; ^ that truth is a class-name for all sorts of definite 
working- values in experience ; ^ that true is the name of what- 
ever, in the way of behef, proves itself to be good, for definite, 
assignable reasons.^ As an illustration of what he means 
James declares that inasmuch as the Absolute affords reh- 
gious comfort to a class of minds, he unhesitatingly calls that 
Absolute true "in so far forth''; in giving people the benefit 
of a moral holiday, it is true.^ Logically, this leads James to 
the illogical doctrine of truths in mutual conflict; but here 
also he is '^ unhesitating " ; the greatest enemy of any one of 
our truths, he declares, may be the rest of our truths.^ Further 
on he assumes that when we make new appHcation of a '^cold- 
storage" truth, we can say of it either that it is useful because 
it is true, or that it is true because it is useful; and then he 
still more surprisingly adds, "Both of these phrases mean 
exactly the same thing." ^ Again he teaches that truth is 
only the expedient in the way of our thinking,^ and that on 
pragmaticprinciples we cannot reject any hypothesis if conse- 
quences useful to life flow from it.^ 

And yet, on the other hand, we must not overlook James's 
vigorous repudiation of the pseudo-pragmatic doctrine, at 
least in its cruder forms. Even in this same series of lectures he 
characterizes as an ''impudent slander" the charge that prag- 
matists say whatever they find it pleasant to say, and call it 
truth. 1^ In a later work he goes further. Not only does he 

1 Pragmatism, pp. 45, 51, 54. 2 75.^ p. 53. 3 75.^ p. 68. " 16., p. 76. 

5 76., pp. 73, 78. « 76., p. 78. ^ j^,., p. 204. « 76., p. 222. ^ 76., p. 273. 
10 76., pp. 233-4 ; cf. The Meaning of Truth, pp. 70-1, where the charge is 
stigmatized as surprisingly shallow, and also p. 210, note. 



A CRITIQUE OF ANTI-INTELLECTUALISM 419 

withdraw the saying that the Absolute is true in any sense ; ^ 
he assures Bertrand Russell that it is an "obvious absurdity" 
to suppose that any one who believes in a proposition must first 
have made out clearly that its consequences are good, and that 
his belief must primarily be in that fact,^ and in his reply to 
Marcel Hebert he disavows the doctrine ''that whatever 
proves subjectively expedient in the way of our thinking, is 
Hrue' in the absolute and unrestricted sense of the word, 
whether it corresponds to any objective state of things outside 
of our thought or not." ^ 

But we must not take this disavowal too uncritically. In 
the first place we would note that in his anxiety to repudiate 
the ''silly" doctrine Russell supposes the pragmatists to hold, 
James seems on the very point of disowning the most essential 
doctrine of pragmatism; good consequences, he says, are 
proposed by the pragmatist, not as the logical cue for his be- 
liefs, but as the cause or motive lying back of them.^ More- 
over, although his disclaimer as against the criticisms of Hebert 
shows that he honestly supposes himself to be free from at 
least the cruder form of pseudo-pragmatism (the doctrine that 
what is useful in a particular situation is true universally), we 
nevertheless find him defining the true as the expedient "in 
the long run" and "on the whole," ^ which qualifications plainly 
show that it is not simply "true for some particular purpose" 
that is intended. And even in the later work we read again 
that satisfactions grow pari passu as our ideas approach in- 
dependent reality, and that "the matter of the true is . . . 
absolutely identical with the matter of the satisfactory." ® 
He recognizes that the trouble Hes very largely in the ambiguity 
of the word practical ; ^ but he himself has done Kttle to reUeve 
that ambiguity. 

With Schiller the case is much the same as with James, in 
so far as pseudo-pragmatism is concerned. This doctrine he 
vigorously repudiates on occasion, but in his constructive 
statements on truth and its criterion he by no means always 
avoids it. He claims never to have been guilty of the simple 

1 The Meaning of Truth, pp. viii-x ; 226-9. 2 j^,.^ p. 272. 3 /&., p. 231. 

* lb., p. 273. 5 Pragmatism, p. 222. 

6 The Meaning of Truth, pp. 158-60. ' 76., p. 210. 



420 THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE 

conversion from ''All truths work" to ''AH that works is true," ^ 
and says that not all that claims to be true, but only what has 
worked well, is to be accepted as true.^ But these distinctions 
and disclaimers are not very impressive when compared with 
such expressions as that whatever is relevant and conducive 
to our ends is true,^ that truth is the useful, eflB.cient, workable,^ 
that our truth is chosen,^ that it is unthinkable that any truth 
should fail to be satisfactory,^ that whatever works is true for 
the individual for whom it works,^ that different men are right 
in choosing different metaphysical systems,^ that if one enjoys 
his scepticism, or is satisfied to be inconsistent, he is at Hberty, 
from the pragmatic point of view, to be as sceptical or incon- 
sistent as he pleases,^ that since reUgion works, it is true, at 
least until superseded by something truer, ^^ and that our dis- 
carded ex-truths, although now error, really were truths in 
their day.^^ Similarly Alfred Sidgwick maintains, in the name 
of pragmatism, that so long as an assertion works, it is accepted 
as true, and is true for the purpose concerned, although next 
year's purpose may correct this year's truths.^^ 

Some other pragmatists, such as Papini, Le Roy, and others, 
have been perhaps even more guilty than James and Schiller 
in this connection, but the members of the "Chicago School" 
— at least the more responsible of them — have been fairly 
careful to avoid such pseudo-pragmatic utterances. Thus 
Dewey, in his important article, "What does Pragmatism 
Mean by Practical?" ^^ takes James to task for his careless 
manner of expression, saying that it seems unpragmatic for 
pragmatism to content itself with finding out the value of a 
conception whose own inherent intellectual significance prag- 
matism has not first determined by treating it not as a truth, 
but simply as a working hypothesis and method ; ^^ and that it is 
only consequences which are actually produced by the working 

^Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, 1910-11, pp. 163-4; Mind, N.S., 
XXI, 1912, pp. 532, 534. 

^Studies in Humanism, p. 159; Proc. Aristot. Soc, 1910—11, p. 152. 

3 Studies, etc., p. 152. * Humanism, p. 59. * Studies, p. 208. 

« Riddles of the Sphinx, 1910, p. 134. ^ Mind, N.S., XXI, 1912, p. 534. 

8 Studies, etc., p. 18. » Journal of Philosophy, Vol. IV, 1907, p. 486. 

w Studies, p. 359. " 76., p. 212. 12 Mind, N.S., Vol. XXIII, 1914, p. 100. 

13 Journal of Philosophy, V, 1908, pp. 85-99. " lb., p. 92. 



A CRITIQUE OF ANTI-INTELLECTUALISM 421 

of the idea in cooperation with, or in appHcation to, prior reah- 
ties, that are good consequences in that specific sense of ''good" 
which is relevant to estabhshing the truth of an idea.^ More- 
over he disclaims having ever said that truth is what gives satis- 
faction, or having ever identified any satisfaction with the truth 
of an idea, save that satisfaction which arises when the idea as 
working hypothesis is applied to prior existences in such a way 
as to fulfil what it intends.^ A. W. Moore also insists that 
pragmatism is not, and must not be, a substitution of faith or 
will or feeling for thinking, ^ and that it is not enough to say 
that true ideas are the ideas which ''work"; they must meet 
the demand of the concrete situation in which they arise ; they 
must work in the way they set out to work.^ 

But even of the Chicago School it is true that pseudo-prag- 
matic ideas and forms of expression tend to creep in. It may 
be questioned whether an idea's "working in the way it sets 
out to work," ^ is a formula either unambiguous enough or 
otherwise adequate to be a criterion of truth ; it would apply 
in the case of errors acted upon and not yet discovered to be 
such, but still taken to be truths. Indeed, the distinction 
between "working" and "working as it set out to work" would 
almost seem to correspond to the distinction between the two 
types of pseudo-pragmatism noted above, the one holding 
that what works at all is true generally, the other that what 
works at all is true so long as it works. But it is nothing less 
than the quintessence of pseudo-pragmatism that we have in 
the doctrine of Bawden, that truth is that which works in rela- 
tion to a purpose or end, and that not opinions only, but truths 
also, are rightly subject to compromise and change.^ 

Some explanation of the too prevalent error of pseudo- 
pragmatism is afforded by the fact, which we have already noted, 
that pragmatists commonly represent truth or trueness as a 
quality of ideas, rather than of judgments. This being as- 

1 lb., p. 93. 2 lb., p. 94. 3 75.^ VI, 1909, p. 294. 

* The Functional vs. Representational Theories in Locke's Essay, p. 67 ; Prag- 
matism and Its Critics, p. 87 ; cf. Dewey, Influence of Darwin, p. 150 ; Journal 
of Philosophy, V, 1908, p. 94. 

* See, besides references in the immediately preceding foot-note, H. H. 
Bawden, Principles of Pragmatism, p. 199. Cf. also Schiller, Riddles of the 
Sphinx, p. 133. ^ Principles of Pragmatism, pp. 202, 204. 



422 THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE 

Slimed, it is indeed necessary to say with Mrs. Helen Thompson 
WooUey, one of Dewey's disciples, that a content may be true 
in one set of circumstances and false in another, because the 
truth is never in the content of an idea, but in its function.^ 
But what it is most important to remark is that it is primarily 
in the function of the idea in the judgment that its truth is to 
be looked for ; otherwise the statement is almost certain to be 
misleading. Truth is to be found not in the content of the 
idea, but in its function (in the judgment) ; but what pseudo- 
pragmatism forgets is that truth is not to be looked for pri- 
marily in the function of the judgment (in practical life) , but in 
its content. Failure at this point is what even Dewey is con- 
strained to charge against James. ''What Mr. James says 
about the value of truth when accomplished," writes Dewey, 
''is likely to be employed by some as a criterion for ideas as 
ideas ; while, on the other hand, Mr. James himself is hkely to 
pass lightly from the consequences that determine the worth 
of a beUef to those which decide the worth of an idea." ^ 

But the other doctrine about truth that we have mentioned 
as going beyond essential pragmatism, viz. hyper-pragmatism, is 
much more characteristic of pragmatists, and may be taken as 
an essential element in the "wider" or more "radical" type of 
current pragmatism. In fact, we would hold that while the 
doctrine of the ultimately practical character of the criterion 
of truth is the good essence, this hyper-pragmatism is, in a 
peculiar sense, we would say, the bad essence of current prag- 
matism as a logical doctrine. Speaking broadly, while essential 
pragmatism finds the criterion of truth in its function, hyper- 
pragmatism identifies truth with its function. In this more 
extreme development of the movement William James has per- 
haps been the most outspoken leader. He adds to the prag- 
matic method, which he takes over from Peirce,^ "a genetic 
theory of what is meant by truth." ^ Stated with characteristic 
boldness, the teaching is as follows: "Truth happens to an 
idea. It becomes true, is made true by events. Its verity is 
in fact an event, a process : the process, namely, of its verifying 
itself, its Yeri-fication. Its validity is the process of its valid- 

1 Journal of Philosophy, VI, 1909, p. 301. 2 j?,.^ y, 1908, p. 94. 

3/6., Vol.. I, pp. 673-87; Pragmatism, pp. 46-7. ^ lb., pp. 65-6. 



A CRITIQUE OF ANTI-INTELLECTUALISM 423 

ationJ' ^ ''Truth is simply a collective name for verification 
processes," ^ i.e. processes which guide conduct agreeably.^ 
Moreover, ''verification and validation themselves pragmati- 
cally mean . . . certain practical consequences of the verified 
and validated data," * so that the doctrine in its final form 
comes to be that "the truth of any statement consists in the con- 
sequences." ^ Similarly according to Schiller, truth means 
"successful operation on reality," ^ a "manipulation" of our 
objects which "turns out to be useful." ^ In short, "verity is 
verification." ^ Schiller's doctrine is reproduced by a disciple, 
J. W. Snellman, in the assertion that the meaning of truth is 
indistinguishable from its test.^ The same general position is 
taken by the members of the Chicago School. Indeed in this 
matter Dewey is especially pronounced. Truth, he declares, 
denotes "specific verifications";^"^ verification, or the effective 
working of the idea, and truth are one and the same thing — 
"this working being neither the cause nor the evidence of truth, 
but its nature." " Truth may be defined in terms of agreement, 
only in so far as the " agreement " is interpreted as not essentially 
different from success. ^^ A. W. Moore seems to be rather more 
successful than most pragmatist writers in guarding against 
hyper-pragmatic statements ; and he takes exception to Perry's 
interpretation of the pragmatist doctrine, as confusing the 
criterion of truth with its constitution. ^^ But Bawden, who is 
perhaps the enfant terrible of the Chicago School, insists that 
"if the truth be one thing, and the practical consequences 
a wholly different thing, then pragmatism is not true." ^^ 
And even Boodin, in that part of his logical theory where he is a 
pragmatist, asserts that there is no ultimate difference between 
truth and the test of truth. ^^ 

Very interesting in this connection is the story of the con- 
version of J. E. Russell from intellectualism to pragmatism. 

I lb., p. 201. 2 75,, p. 218. 3 76., p. 202. 
* 76., p. 201 ; cf. p. 205, and Meaning of Truth, p. xv. 

^ 76., p. 52. * Studies in Humanism, p. 118. 

''Humanism, p. 61. ^Journal of Philosophy, IV, 1907, p. 493. 

9 Mind, N.S., XX, 1911, p. 241. i" Influence of Darwin, p. 109. 

II 76., pp. 139-40 ; Mind, N.S., XVI, 1907, p. 337. 

12 Journal of Philosophy, IV, 1907, p. 202. is 76., p. 576. 

1* Principles of Pragmatism, p. 203. i* Truth and Reality, pp. 196-7. 



424 THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE 

In an article in the Journal of Philosophy for 1906 he contended 
that the pragmatist doctrine, that the truthfulness of the idea 
is not different from its success, would not bear the test of critical 
examination. While ready to admit that the true idea does 
not always possess practical value, he maintained that it was 
only because of its agreement with reality in some non-prag- 
matic sense that it could have this usefulness. What makes 
the idea which guides the traveller — or the traveller acting 
upon the idea — successful, he insisted, is that the idea is the 
right or true one; and what makes the idea right or true is 
its agreement with the traveller's actual environment. ^ In a 
later series of articles he contended that it was futile for the 
pragmatist to reason with one who is not a pragmatist. So long 
as the intellectualist adheres to his own original definition of 
truth, the arguments of the pragmatist are unavailing. In the 
intellectualist's sense of the term ''truth," pragmatism is not 
true ; it is true only in the pragmatisms sense of ''true." Thus 
pragmatism is unable to make one a pragmatist; it can save 
from doubt only one who happens to be or to become a prag- 
matist.2 

Responses to this urgent "cry de profundis for salvation from 
doubt" came from Dewey, Schiller, and James. Dewey asked 
how the lost traveller could compare his idea with the environ- 
ment, except by acting upon it.^ Schiller confessed his inability 
to cure a patient who refused to take the prescribed remedy, 
and contended that no further recommendation for a theory 
should be expected than that it was internally consistent, 
and that, if accepted, it would be found satisfactory. If the 
doubter would be saved, he must choose pragmatism, and, 
doing so, he would find it the true way of salvation.^ James, 
insisting that pragmatism gives an intelligible, concrete account 
of meaning and agreement, challenged Russell to produce a 
similarly definite statement of what the intellectualist means 
by agreement.^ This challenge was seconded by Schiller.^ 

In reply to his would-be deliverers Russell admitted that 
for consistent pragmatism the verity of an idea is its verification, 

1 Journal of Philosophy, III, 1906, pp. 599-601 ; cf. Philosophical Review, XV, 
1906, pp. 406-13. 2 75., jy, 1907, pp. 57-64, 242-3, 292. 

3 lb., p. 202. " lb., pp. 236-7, 486-7. ^ 7?,.^ pp. 295, 296. « 7^., p. 435. 



A CRITIQUE OF ANTI-INTELLECTUALISM 425 

but insisted that while one could indeed make the venture of 
faith, and treat an hypothesis as true, it was possible, even 
while doing so, to remain in a state of theoretical doubt. ^ But 
the unanswerable challenge to give a satisfactory intellectualist 
definition of truth remained a source of disquietude; and it 
was by no means clear that one could consistently remain in 
theoretical doubt as to the truth of the pragmatist doctrine of 
truth, once he had accepted it as his working hj^pothesis ; 
for, if it worked satisfactorily to act upon the hypothesis 
that truth is satisfactory working, then truth must be satis- 
factory working. For two years nothing on the subject of 
truth appeared from Russell's pen in the philosophical journals, 
and then he made confession of his conversion to the pragmatist 
faith, announcing that his change of view had been mainly due 
to his own attempts to remain an anti-pragmatist, and as such 
to meet the attack of the pragmatist, and especially his chal- 
lenge to specify the element of meaning of truth which prag- 
matism does not contain. He confessed inability to show 
how an idea could be true prior to its verification.^ Later in the 
same year he told of his having come to the conviction that prag- 
matism is not only a tenable doctrine, but offers a more satis- 
factory solution of the problem of knowledge than the doctrine 
it displaces.^ 

On the same occasion Russell, with the zeal of a new convert, 
tried to bring out into the full light of pragmatism a writer 
(Oliver C. Quick) whom he found occupying much the same 
ground as he himself had formerly held. Repeating the chal- 
lenge that had been too much for himself, he inquired what other 
than a pragmatic meaning could be given to the terms ''agree 
with" and "correspond to." ^ Quick, however, was more ob- 
durate than he had been, saying in reply, ''I maintain that 
reality is other than value, though I cannot define clearly what 
it is." ^ Thereupon Russell reaffirmed his own pragmatic 
position, defining the truth of ideas in terms of their funda- 
mental value. ^ And, finally, in his book, A First Course in 
Philosophy, he not only identifies the truth of an idea with the 

1 lb., pp. 489-90. 2 lb., Vol. VII, 1910, pp. 23-4. 

3 Mind, N.S., XIX, 1910, p. 547. f/&., pp. 548-9. 

5 lb., XX, 1911, p. 257. 6 lb., p. 539. 



426 THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE 

successful discharge of its function ; he follows James in identify- 
ing this good working or trueness of an idea with its verification, 
or being made true, and this again with the good consequences 
or satisfactory experiences resulting from acting on the idea. 
"The good consequences of an idea . . . are its verification, 
not . . . that they merely prove that the idea was true, they are 
the trueness of the idea itself." ^ Thus we read the story of the 
conversion of the intellectualist, not onl}?- to essential prag- 
matism, but to the extremes of hyper-pragmatism. 

Now this hyper-pragmatism does afford, as its adherents 
maintain, what would be, if true, a "concrete account" of the 
nature of truth. But even so undoubted a good as concreteness 
may be purchased at too heavy a price. The pragmatic ref- 
utation of this extreme pragmatism is that it so confuses the 
idea of truth as to make it of very little practical value. In 
the first place, the pragmatist of this extreme type "cannot 
separate the truth of an idea from our knowledge of its truth" ; ^ 
and yet both in science and in common life, we are forced to 
make use of the idea of hypotheses which are true, though not 
yet verified; judgments which turn out to have been true, 
though when first made they were not known as yet to be true. 
James uses for such cases the terms "verifiable" and "virtually 
true," ^ and Schiller classifies such unverified hypotheses as 
truth-claims.^ Dewey also seems to think it sufficient to 
speak of hypotheses as "candidates for truth," ^ "true before- 
hand" being explained as meaning nothing but "ability to 
work";^ until tested practically, beliefs are mere dogmas, 
he avers, not truths.'' But this distinction of the pragmatists 
between actual truth and virtual truth, or mere truth-claim, or 
candidate for truth, does not coincide with the practically 
necessary distinction of science and common thought, between 
truth entertained but not yet verified and truth known to be 
such. It has no pigeon-hole wherein to classify correct guesses 
and all truths as yet unverified. If hyper-pragmatism were true, 

1 A First Course in Philosophy, 1913, pp. 202-4. 

2 Schiller, Journal of Philosophy, IV, 1907, p. 493. 

3 Pragmatism, pp. 207-9 ; The Meaning of Truth, pp. 101, 164-5. 
^Humanism, p. 98, note; Studies, pp. 147-8, 193; cf. D. L. Murray, Prag- 
matism, p. 42, 5 Influence of Darwin, p. 141. ^ lb., p. 163. ^ lb., p. 167. 



A CRITIQUE OF ANTI-INTELLECTUALISM 427 

it ought never to be possible for us to make a true judgment 
without its being completely verified from the first. But we 
are constantly learning that judgments which were at first 
merely tentative were nevertheless true. 

This hyper-pragmatism also leads, in the second place, to 
the rather revolutionary doctrine of the essentially temporary 
and mutable character of truth. The unchangeabty true, 
James regards as an ''ideal vanishing-point, towards which we 
imagine that all our temporary truths will some day converge." ^ 
Schiller speaks of what we now know to be errors as "discarded 
ex-truths"; they ''were 'truths' in their day," but truth is a 
commodity which is of a perishable nature. ^ In fact, the 
doctrine is a common one in current pragmatism, and it is but 
a natural consequence of the hyper-pragmatist's fundamental 
confusion of the nature of truth. Alfred Sidgwick, himself a 
pragmatist, says that for the pragmatist "all truths are pro tern 
truths at best, and the duration of their validity is uncertain." ^ 
One is tempted to inquire whether it is an absolute and unchange- 
able truth that no human truth is unchangeably true, and to 
remark that it would be more in keeping with the supposedly 
empirical temper of pragmatism to wait for any particular 
belief to be refuted, instead of dogmatically assuming beforehand 
that it is certain to be outgrown. It surely will not be per- 
manently satisfactory to hold that no truth will permanently 
satisfy, or that all things else are in a flux, and only pragmatism 
has come to stay. 

But in any case enough has been said to show that, weighed 
in the balances of its own criterion of "working," this extreme 
pragmatism as a theory of the nature of truth is found wanting ; 
hyper-pragmatism fails to work, except in the direction of de- 
stroying our practically necessary conception of truth. More- 
over, if, as has been maintained above, and as we shall more 
fully justify in the sequel, the essence of pragmatism can be 
set forth without making use of this doubtful principle of hyper- 
pragmatism, on the pragmatic ground that no difference should 
be recognized unless it makes sl difference, such an extreme 
doctrine might well be rejected by the essential pragmatist 

1 Pragmatism, pp. 222-3. 2 Studies, pp. 212-3. 

' Journal of Philosophy, II, 1905, p. 269. 



428 THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE 

himself. As we have just seen, the only practical difference 
it makes seems to be a difference for the worse. 

But if hyper-pragmatism is such an unnecessary and in- 
convenient doctrine, how did it come to find so large a place in 
the creed of pragmatists? What is its explanation? As a 
matter of fact there are several considerations, almost any one 
of which would suffice to explain psychologically the genesis 
of hyper-pragmatism, but none of which, singly or in combina- 
tion with each other, is adequate to give it logical justification. 
In the first place, and probably most potent of all, is the effect 
of assuming that truth must be a quality of ideas, rather than of 
judgments. On this assumption there can be no truth except 
as the idea is brought into relation to reality, for a bare logical 
idea, an abstract predicate can only be true if it has something 
to be true to. It is concluded, therefore, that truth cannot be 
a property of ideas antecedent to verification,^ that it is a property 
of ideas only in verification,^ and so on, through all the charac- 
teristic inferences of hyper-pragmatism.^ But even on the basis 
of the assumption that truth is a property of ideas, the hyper- 
pragmatist infers more than is warranted. The idea would 
have to be brought into relation to reality, as it is in the judg- 
ment, to be true; but not necessarily as it is in the verified 
judgment. And so, more adequate than James's expression, 
''virtual truth," or Schiller's "truth-claim," or perhaps even 
Dewey's ''candidate for truth," would it be to say that an 
idea is hypothetically true ; it would be true if it w^re asserted 
of a certain reality in a certain situation for a certain purpose, 
or certain purposes, in such a way as to fulfil certain conditions 
— just what these conditions are being the exact matter of dis- 
pute in connection with the definition of truth. But since the idea 
might fulfil these conditions without the individual judging hav- 
ing at the time the experience in the light of which the judgment 
is known to be true, it cannot be said that there is even a one-to- 
one correspondence between instances of truth and instances of 
verification, much less a remainderless identity between them. 

^ Dewey, Journal of Philosophy, VI, 1909, p. 433. 
» Schiller, Journal of Philosophy, IV, 1907, p. 493. 

3 Compare, in this connection, J, E. Russell's earlier and later positions, 
Journal of Philosophy, IV, 1907, p. 290 ; VII, 1910, p. 24. 



A CRITIQUE OF ANTI-INTELLECTUALISM 429 

A second explanation of hyper-pragmatism, and one of 
scarcely less importance, is to be found in the peculiar conse- 
quences of James's transition from Peirce's pragmatic doctrine 
of meaning to the pragmatic doctrine of the meaning of truth. 
If the meaning of anything is best discovered by examining 
its consequences, it follows that the meaning of truth is best 
discovered by examining the consequences of truth; so that, 
pragmatically speaking, any truth is, ultimately, the practical 
difference it makes. But it ought to be remembered that this 
is true only in the same way that it is true that what love, or 
hate, or peace, or war, or righteousness, or sin is, is its conse- 
quences, the difference it makes practically in human experience. 
Manifestly it will not do to take every special pragmatic meaning 
forthwith as a definition. A definition must be reversible, 
simply convertible ; but special pragmatic meanings are no more 
reversible than is the relation of cause and effect. Of course 
we commonty assume that a thing is what it means; but, 
strictly speaking, an important distinction obtains between 
the two. Even from the standpoint of an acceptance of the 
pragmatic method, the definition states a certain universal 
minimum of pragmatic meaning, viz. what the thing is, or means, 
for all purposes ; but in addition to this it has a multitude of 
special pragmatic meanings, viz. what it may mean (mediate, 
be a means to) for certain special purposes, or, in other words, 
what consequences it will lead to when used in a certain way, 
as means to a certain ultimate end. The former, viz. "what it 
is," is its most proximate meaning; the latter, i.e. "what it 
means," means what it is more ultimately, in special cases. 
Now it is the mistake of the intellectualist that he tends to 
confine meaning to that which can be expressed in a reversible 
proposition, or definition, ignoring the fact that all meaning, 
even definition, is relative to purpose. But it is the mistake 
of James and his hyper-pragmatist disciples that they tend 
to eliminate meaning in the sense that is expressible in a revers- 
ible proposition, or definition, and to confine it to the multitude 
of additional special pragmatic meanings. And even this would 
not be so confusing, if this sum of special pragmatic meanings 
were not forced in the case of truth to do service as a definition. 
It is this procedure that forms the basis for the charge that he 



430 THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE 

takes his pragmatic meaning of truth as true "in the intel- 
lectuahst sense." ^ 

Still another very potent influence in the direction of hyper- 
pragmatism has been the failure of pure intellectuahsm to give 
a satisfactory account of the nature and criterion of truth, 
combined with the impression that the more radical type of 
current pragmatism is the only logical alternative, since the 
pragmatic method is vaUd. This is shown conspicuously in 
the story of Russell's controversy with the pragmatists and his 
final capitulation.2 But that hyper-pragmatism is not a neces- 
sary consequence of the pragmatic method has been indicated, 
and in the constructive part of our discussion it will be our 
task to set forth another and more satisfactory alternative to 
absolute intellectuahsm. A further motive, and one which has 
grown out of the one just mentioned, has been the determina- 
tion to carry through to the end a consistent anti-intellectuaUst 
programme. This motive seems to have been especially 
operative in the controversial writings of Schiller. 

Another root of hyper-pragmatism has been the pragmatic 
view of reality, as fluctuating in correspondence with the flux 
of human purposes, as being what it is for us because so deter- 
mined by human will, individual or social. This appears rather 
prominently in the writings of Schiller and Murray, as a pragmatic 
realism within the hmits of a pluralistic subjective idealism,^ and 
in the " experience philosophy " of the Chicago School,^ according 
to which psychology and logic between them are considered 
competent to deal philosophically with the nature of reality, 
without any further metaphysics. Reahty is practical, they 
hold ; ^ taking a content of immediate experience as real makes 
it real, logically speaking — and that is the ultimate way of 
speaking — and what is thus real in the beginning of the judging 
act may be quite different from what is real at the end of the 

1 See J. E. Russell, Journal of Philosophy, IV, 1907, pp. 61-3 ; J. B. Pratt, 
What is Pragmatism ? p. 128 ; James, The Meaning of Truth, pp. 197-200. 

^Journal of Philosophy, IV, 1907, pp. 202, 291, 295-6; VII, 1910, p. 23; 
Mind, N.S., XIX, 1910, pp. 547-9; XX, 1911, p. 539; Russell, A First Course 
in Philosophy, pp. 202-5. 

3 SchUler, Mind, N.S., XVIII, 1909, pp. 182-3 ; Murray, ib., pp. 389-90. 

* See criticisms by W. Fite, Philosophical Review, XV, 1906, pp. 1-16. 

s Dewey, "Does Reality Possess Practical Character?" in Essays . . . in 
Honor of William James, 1908. 



A CRITIQUE OF ANTI-INTELLECTUALISM 431 

process.^ Now where the judgment is thus regarded as a capital 
operation on reahty, the idea is naturally interpreted as the 
surgical instrument, and its truth as nothing more than its 
efficiency, or the success of the operation. But all this is valid 
only on the more than questionable supposition that a realistic 
view is untenable. Finally, a minor ground of hyper-prag- 
matism, or perhaps a mere encouragement on its way, is the 
appeal to the etymology of the term verification.^ But trans- 
mutations of meaning have been so extensive and frequent that 
the value of an argument from etymology is now generally 
recognized as being well-nigh infinitesimal. 

But even when it avoids the errors of pseudo-pragmatism and 
hyper-pragmatism, what we have called essential pragmatism 
has its own difficulties. No one is a genuine convert to prag- 
matism, we have maintained, unless he proposes to live, intel- 
lectually speaking, by the principle of measuring truth, however 
cautiously, hy the standard of practical value, of usefulness. 
But once safely converted, it remains for the pragmatist to 
show his still doubting friends that he is able to recognize just 
what sort and what degree of usefulness may be taken as a 
guarantee of truth. Obviously not every sort or degree of 
practical value can be taken as an indication of truth, if the 
notion of truth itself is to retain for us any practical value. 

In the application of the pragmatic criterion for the deter- 
mination of truth, several definite problems have been en- 
countered. Of these the chief have been the avoidance of 
*' crass utilitarianism," the overcoming of ultra-individualism, 
and a due recognition of the theoretical interest, system, and 
strictly scientific methods. One of the commonest charges 
levelled against the pragmatic method has been that it is upon 
*Hhe dead level of utilitarianism." ^ Now it is undoubtedly 
true, as even the anti-pragmatists would admit,^ that originally 
consciousness and, in man, the judging process were valuable 

1 A. W. Moore, Journal of Philosophy, IV, 1907, p. 571. 

2 James, Pragmatism, p. 201. 

3 T. De Laguna, Dogmatism, and Evolution, p. 140 ; cf. G. A. Tawney, "Utili- 
tarianism in Epistemology," Journal of Philosophy, Vol. I, 1904, pp. 337 ff. ; 
W. Caldwell, Pragmatism and Idealism, p. 136. 

* E.g. Bradley, Principles of Logic, pp. 459-60 ; Essays on Truth and Reality, 
pp. 75, 141. 



432 THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE 

chiefly as means of better adjusting the animal organism to its 
environment, so that the physical life might be preserved and 
propagated. In that primitive situation the biological function 
of judgments, i.e. the way in which they functioned in the 
service of the physical life of the individual and of the race, was, 
roughly speaking, an index of their truth.^ But if it should be 
assumed that not only then but now and always the only test of 
truth is its function in man's struggle for physical existence, we 
would have an animalistic pragmatism which could not be ade- 
quate as a theory of the test of truth employed by any being 
whose life was above the merely animal level. It is a fact, 
however, that in conscious life new interests are constantly 
developing, many of which are not centred in the fate of the 
physical organism at all. Moreover these new interests peculiar 
to man as a spiritual personality may lead to a transvaluation 
of all former values, so that instead of life's being interpreted 
in its lowest terms, as the physical existence of the individual 
and of the race, it is interpreted in its highest terms, as the spirit- 

1 It was on the basis of this fact that Georg Simmel developed, twenty years 
ago, a species of biological pragmatism, anticipating not a few of the features 
of the Chicago instrumentalism, but tending to reduce the criterion and 
nature of even the highest human truth to the level of mere usefulness for 
the furthering of the animal life (" Ueber eine Beziehung der Selectionslehre 
zur Erkenntnistheorie," Archiv filr systematische Philosophie, I, 1895, pp. 34-45). 
Having felt obliged, in view of such facts as that of the dependence of our 
representations upon the specific energies of our "psychical organs," to con- 
clude that we cannot reach the reality of things in themselves, Simmel 
combines with this representational agnosticism the theory that since for the 
lower animals satisfactoriness for the furthering of life is the only basis for 
distinguishing between "representations," so it must be in the case of man. 
Among the innumerable "representations" which occur, those which prove 
themselves biologically useful become fixed according to the well-known pro- 
cess of natural selection, and thus come to be regarded as the " true " 
representation of the world. Even when truth is imagined to have some 
other meaning than usefulness in the natural struggle for the furtherance of 
life, it can have ultimately no other criterion. But as a matter of fact the 
trueness of any thought means the uniformly satisfactory biological conse- 
quences of using it — nothing more. 

But, as Simmel himself remarks, it is a serious question whether the concept 
of truth will endure, when denuded thus of the notion of objective validity. 
That truth is, even in man, nothing but the value of mental contents for 
the animal life, is not, there seems good ground to surmise, the theory of 
truth most valuable for man's moral character, and so, ultimately, even for 
his animal life; and if this be true, then Simmel's theory of truth, even by 
bis_pwn criterion, is untrue. 



A CRITIQUE OP ANTI-INTELLECTUALISM 433 

ual development and efficiency of the individual and society. 
Eucken's accusation against pragmatism, that ''it does not 
sufficiently distinguish between the natural desires and the 
elevation of life, between the decoration of a given world and the 
struggle for a new one, between what is useful and what is 
good,^^ ^ is not unworthy of consideration. Truth can be 
measured by a higher standard than its function in the struggle 
for bare existence, viz. by its function in the struggle for a better 
existence. Pragmatism, as instrumentalism, must remember 
that instead of consciousness and judgments being regarded 
as mere means for the promotion of the physical life, the physi- 
cal life is now regarded, even by people of ordinary spirituality, 
as simply or chiefly instrumental in the promotion of the con- 
scious life in its spiritual aspects.^ The ideal interests no longer 
exist for the sake of the physical, but the physical for the sake 
of the ideal. ''Man began to think in order that he might eat : 
he has evolved to the point where he eats in order that he may 
think." ^ Animalistic pragmatism, then, gives place to a 
humanistic doctrine, in which it is proposed to test the truth of 
judgments by their utility in the service of that life in which all 
the peculiarly and legitimately human interests are recognized 
as being of fundamental importance. The ultimate end, by 
being useful toward which the truth must, as means, accredit 
itself, must include the "perfect harmony of our whole life." * 
Once the ends in view are thoroughly accredited as humanly and 
spiritually necessary, it may be assumed, according to this 
humanistic pragmatism, that those judgments are valid which 
are ultimately necessary for the achievement of these ends. 
Thus necessity, in the sense of what is humanly and spiritually 
necessary, remains the test of the truth of judgments. 

But sometimes even humanistic pragmatism presents itself 
in an unduly individualistic form. The individual man as a 
purposive active being is taken as the measure of all values, 
including the truth of judgments. "What works," it is insisted 
by Schiller, "is true for the individual for whom it works." ^ 

1 Knowledge and Life, Eng. Tr., pp. 94-7 ; cf. Main Currents of Modern 
Thought, pp. 79-81. 

* For a definition of the term "spiritual " see p. 448, infra. 

3 W. P. Montague, Journal of Philosophy, VI, 1909, p. 489. 

* Schiller, Humanism, p. 61. 6 Mind, N.S., XXI, 1912, p. 534. 

2p 



434 THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE 

*'Men with different fortunes, histories, and temperaments 
ought not to arrive at the same metaphysic," he claims, ^'nor 
can they do so honestly ; each should react individually on the 
food for thought which his personal life affords, and the resulting 
differences ought not to be set aside as void of ultimate signifi- 
cance." ^ But elsewhere Schiller seeks to correct this ultra- 
individualism, and to pay due respect to "the social character 
of truth." 2 ''Society," he says, '^exercises almost as severe a 
control over the intellectual as over the moral eccentricities 
and non-conformities of its members. . . . Whatever, there- 
fore, individuals may recognize and value as Hrue,' the 'truths' 
which de facto prevail and are recognized as objective will only 
be a selection from those we are subjectively tempted to recog- 
nize." ^ 

With the Chicago School, on the other hand, the safeguarding 
against extreme individualism is no mere afterthought. A. W. 
Moore protests that the variety of pragmatism with which he is 
acquainted thinks of the "private consciousness" not only as 
born of, but as growing up in, and therefore continuing all the 
while vitally and organically related to, its social matrix, so 
that not only in its origin, but in its continued development 
and operation this consciousness, with its judgments and truth, 
must always be a function of the whole social situation. The 
need for readjustment is not "the need of some one, lone, ma- 
rooned organism or mind only/' and the readjustment, in 
those instances in which it does occur, is " always in and of a 
'social situation.'" ^ According, then, to this revised or ortho- 
dox pragmatism — whichever it may be — it would appear 
that not only are the judgments we make social products; 
their truth must be decided by their experienced value to society. 
But even this social pragmatism is not without its diffiiculties. 
Strictly interpreted, it would lead to some curious results. 
For instance, in the days of the undisputed supremacy and social 
satisfactoriness of the Ptolemaic astronomy the universe was 
geocentric, but in the days of Copernicus it began to change its 
fundamental constitution, until at length it settled down into 
a multitude of heliocentric solar systems. 

1 Studies, p. 18. 2 76., p. 155. 3 lb., p. 153. 

^ Pragmatism and Its Critics, pp. 230, 232. 



A CRITIQUE OF ANTI-INTELLECTUALISM 435 

Thus, accused of ultra-utilitarianism and ultra-individualism, 
pragmatism has been led to suggest the measurement of truth 
by spiritual edification and social acceptance. But are even 
these tests quite adequate? Certainly what has apparently 
been spiritually edifying has not always been true, nor can the 
criterion of social acceptance be made to seem adequate except 
at the cost of giving up our common-sense doctrines of the per- 
manence of truth and the world's non-dependence upon human 
experience for its existence and fundamental nature. In short, 
the tests examined so far fall indubitably short of fulfilling the 
conditions of scientific verification and fail to do full justice to 
certain elements of truth in intellectualism. 

To the task of solving the problems presented by the need of 
consistency and system, by the existence of the "theoretical 
interest," and by the normative character of the methods of 
science, current pragmatism has addressed itself, and in some 
instances with a considerable degree of success. This is es- 
pecially true in the case of the matter of consistency and system. 
The verification of consistency has come to be regarded as an 
essential part of the verification of life, the interest in ''ration- 
ality" being regarded as the fundamentally and ultimately 
practical interest in bringing into harmony the various ''practi- 
cal interests" recognized as valid. ^ This pragmatic interpreta- 
tion of rationality enables the pragmatist, then, to feel "that 
what he now thinks goes with what he thinks on other oc- 
casions." 2 

In dealing with the theoretical interest in so far as it is broader 
than the mere interest in consistency, current pragmatism has 
not been, perhaps, quite so successful. "Reflective need 
comprehends theoretic and aesthetic need as well as practical 
need" ; ^ and the problem of the pragmatist is to find some com- 
prehensive sense of the "practical" which will include the other 
two as well as the more obviously practical. James confesses, 

1 Cf. A. K. Rogers, Religious Conception of the World, p. 71. 

2 James, Meaning of Truth, p. 211; cf. Pragmatism, pp. 216-17; Schiller, 
Studies, p. 151. But, we are tempted to ask, does all that the pragmatist 
commonly permits to be called "true" (in the judgments of others and even in 
his own past judgments, when satisfactory for the purposes which prompted 
them) " go " with what he now judges to be true ? See p. 451, infra. 

3 G. A. Tawney, Journal of Philosophy, Vol. I, 1904, p. 340, 



436 THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE 

and Dewey charges against him especially, that the term practi- 
cal has been used too carelessly by pragmatists.^ But, in 
general, while it is insisted that theory is an outgrowth of 
practice and incapable of independent existence as mere in- 
tellection,^ we get little further information as to the nature 
of intellect beyond the reiterated assertion that it is a special 
movement or mode of practice.^ Science is not inaptly de- 
scribed by Dewey as ''just the forging and arranging of instru- 
mentalities for dealing with individual cases of experience";^ 
but what is to be said about the pursuit of science as something 
interesting apart from its further application ; what about the 
interest in truth for its own sake ? There is apparently a lack 
of candor at this point among pragmatists, due doubtless to 
their fear of conceding too much to the anti-pragmatist. And 
yet, as we have already said, the outstanding representatives 
of pragmatism have not intended to undermine scientific pro- 
cedure, but rather to establish that procedure as the model for 
all philosophy. And there are not wanting statements of the 
nature of the ''working" required by pragmatism as criterion of 
truth, which constitute fairly good accounts of the process of 
scientific verification. James says, "To 'agree' in the widest 
sense with a reality can only mean to be guided either straight 
up to it or into its surroundings, or to be put into such working 
touch with it as to handle either it or something connected with 
it better than if we disagreed." ^ Similarly, according to Dewey, 
"the objective reality which tests the truth of the idea is not 
one which externally antecedes or temporarily co-exists with the 
idea, but one which succeeds it, being its fulfilment as intent 
and method."® Again he says, "Some assumption about the 
possibiUty of a change in the state of things as experienced is 
the idea — and its test or criterion is whether this possible 
change can be effected when the idea is acted upon in good 
faith." ^ And again, "It seems unpragmatic for pragmatism 
to content itself with finding out the value of a conception whose 

1 James, Meaning of Truth, p. 207 ; Dewey, "What Does Pragmatism Mean 
by Practical?" Journal of Philosophy, V, 1908, pp. 85-99. 

2 Schiller, Studies, p. 128. ^ Dewey, Influence of Darwin, pp. 125-6. 
* The Logical Conditions of the Scientific Treatment of Morality, p. 8. 

^ Pragmatism, pp. 212-13 ; cf. The Meaning of Truth, p. 157. 

8 Journal of Philosophy, IV, 1907, p. 313. ^ Influence of Darwin, p. 135. 



A CRITIQUE OF ANTI-INTELLECTUALISM 437 

own inherent intellectual significance pragmatism has not first 
determined by treating it not as a truth, but simply as a working 
hypothesis and method. ... I have never identified any 
satisfaction with the truth of an idea, save that satisfaction 
which arises when the idea as working hypothesis or tentative 
method is applied to prior existences in such a way as to fulfil 
what it intends."^ Finally, J. E. Russell has this to say, 
''The truth of an idea consists in the value of that idea in so 
guiding and controlling experience as to bring us into direct 
experiential relations with the particular object or part of the 
real world we may be seeking to know and practically to possess. 
This functional value of an idea is what we mean by its truth." ^ 
Manifestly what each of these writers has in mind is the process 
of verification in the empirical sciences. 

Are we to understand, then, that the only novelty introduced 
by essential pragmatism is a biological language into which the 
methodology of science may be translated? Or is it a way of 
getting the appearance of scientific justification for practically 
valuable philosophical doctrines by bringing both the acknowl- 
edged science and the valuable philosophy under a common 
formula? This is a crucial point which current pragmatism 
has left altogether too obscure, giving occasion for the gibe 
quoted above : ''If it is new, it is nonsense; if it is old, it is 
obvious." And the failure here is simply the last remainder of 
that pseudo-pragmatism which — perhaps not altogether un- 
wisely — leaves always vague and somewhat undefined the con- 
sequences by which the truth is to be tested.^ Perhaps prag- 
matism may yet be useful, and thus in some indubitable sense 
pragmatically justified, in showing how some of the contents of 
a spiritually valuable philosophy may become genuinely scien- 
tific ; but current pragmatism has not yet gone so far, nor has 
it clearly seen, apparently, that such an event is within the 
bounds of possibihty. 

1 Journal of Philosophy, V, 1908, pp. 92, 94. 

^Mind, N.S., XX, 1911, p. 539. 

3 Cf. W. Caldwell, Pragmatism and Idealism, p. 51. 



CHAPTER XIX 
Ckitical Monism in Logical Theory 

We have examined the various attempts of logical dualism and 
an absolute logical monism, both intellectualistic and anti-intel- 
lectualistic, to solve the problem of truth, and have not found 
any that leads to wholly satisfactory results. Absolute intellect- 
ualism insists that in truth there is some sort of identity between 
idea and reality, but just what sort or degree of identity, it 
seems unable to state. Moreover it has failed properly to 
assimilate what has been formulated as the "Law of Significant 
Assertion," the fact, namely, that the predicate must always 
be different from the subject. Absolute anti-intellectualism in 
its anti-conceptualist form in sceptical fashion gives up the 
problem, at least so far as thought is concerned. In the form 
in which it appears in current pragmatism, while it holds, in a 
way that gives promise of proving tenable, to "the theoretic 
value of practice," and seems therefore at best to have hit 
upon something which does contain the criterion of truth, the 
differentia of truth as a species of some higher genus, still in its 
common hyper-pragmatic form it has too much ignored and 
even lost sight of the higher genus of which this is the specific 
difference. These results of our critical examination of rival 
theories of truth suggest for our further consideration and con- 
structive elaboration the idea that the solution of the truth- 
problem lies in the direction of a synthesis of certain elements of 
intellectualism on the one hand, and pragmatism on the other. 
May it not perhaps turn out that we shall be able to derive the 
proximate genus for our definition of truth from the one side, 
and the differentia of the species from the other ? 

The position toward which we have been moving, not only in 
the present discussion of the problem of truth, but also in our 
former discussion of the problem of acquaintance, is that in 
judgment an idea, an abstraction from reality, is predicated of 

438 



CRITICAL MONISM IN LOGICAL THEORY 439 

some reality, generally of a reality immediately experienced in 
the past or at present, either by one's self or others, or at least 
experienceable in the future. But in view of the fact that, at 
the moment of judging, the subject-matter of the judgment is 
not ordinarily — if, indeed, ever — completely presented ; and 
in view of the further fact that it would seem unnecessary for 
the person judging to represent to himself what is at the moment 
fully presented, it begins to appear that predication is such 
representation as is required to supplement the presentation of 
the reality which constitutes the subject-matter of thought; 
it is, or aims to be, representation of the reality under con- 
sideration in so far as it needs to be represented, in view of its 
being already only partially presented, or already only partially 
presented and represented, which latter it is by virtue of pre- 
vious judgments, or of similar mental acts. According to this 
view, then, the typical judgment would be analytic of its sub- 
ject, rather than synthetic, because its subject is not a mere 
idea or thought-construct, but an independent reality with its 
primary and secondary qualities and relations. Only as re- 
lated to tertiary qualities and relations would the judgment be 
synthetic of its subject. On the other hand it could be freely 
admitted that all real live judgment is synthetic of the concept or 
idea we are coming to have of the subject. 

It should be noted that this view does not involve the absolute 
dualism in epistemology which we have seen sufficient reason 
to reject. In all judging there is a duality of subject and predi- 
cate, of reality and idea, of represented and representing; 
but this necessary duality does not involve an absolute dualism. 
Representation does not exclude previous and further possible 
presentation ; on the contrary it can make good its claims only 
if there can be and is direct presentation. One who is an ab- 
solute intellectualist in logical theory, and an absolute monist, 
idealistic or realistic, in epistemology, can find no place for 
knowledge by representation, and consequently no place for the 
truth of judgments, which obviously undertake such a repre- 
sentation. On the other hand the absolute intellectualist who 
is also an absolute dualist in epistemology, while he would make 
all consciousness, like judgment, merely representative, can find 
no representation which amounts to knowledge, because without 



440 THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE 

direct presentation there is no touchstone by which the sup- 
posed representation may be measured, and thus, if not rejected 
as untruth, vindicated as truth, instead of being left as either 
truth or a mere practical substitute for it, we know not which. 

But even when the problem of acquaintance has been solved 
in the way outlined in our constructive statement above,^ the 
strict intellectualist is nonplussed by the problem of truth. 
Sometimes, indeed, he adopts the coherence theory and main- 
tains that the agreement which constitutes the essence of truth 
is the agreement of the judgment or proposition with other 
judgments or propositions. The only approach to a plausible 
excuse for this confusion of truth with mere consistency is to 
be found in the idealistic doctrine that there is no essential dif- 
ference between things and ideas, or propositions — a fallacious 
doctrine with which we have already sufficiently dealt. Very 
commonly, however, the intellectualist recognizes that judgment 
is representational, and that there may be true judgments; 
but just what constitutes the truth of judgments he is unable 
to say. Some sort and degree of identity or representation 
is required ; but the question is. What sort or what degree of 
identity or of representation is sufficient to insure the truth of 
the judgment? If, in judgment, we represent what is not at 
the moment adequately presented, and do so because we need 
to do so, our need being simply our need of the judgment for 
some practical purpose, may it not be that when the represen- 
tation satisfies our practical need, the judgment is true? But 
to say so would be to cease to be a mere intellectualist ; it 
would be to have adopted what might be regarded, from that 
point of view, as the essential element (the good essence) of 
pragmatism. 

But pragmatism itself does not remain unchanged when it 
consents to the definition of truth in terms of identity with or 
representation of reality. If there is to be a permanent settle- 
ment of the controversy between the intellectualist and the 
pragmatist, the latter must concede to the former that the par- 
ticular practical purpose in the interest of which a judgment is 
made may be satisfied by the judgment in some instances, 
without the judgment being therefore necessarily true. For 

1 Ch. XIV. 



CRITICAL MONISM IN LOGICAL THEORY 441 

example, if a nation, A, is at war with two nations, B and C, 
it may adequately serve the practical purposes in the interests 
of which the judgment is made if a soldier of A mistakes a 
soldier of B for a soldier of C. Indeed must it not always be, 
as the intellectualist claims, the purpose to know, the purpose 
of the investigator, the truth-seeker, fulfilment of which is to 
constitute verification, and not necessarily the purpose to 
make some further use of the truth after it has been obtained ? 

But then, would not to concede this to the intellectuahst 
necessarily mean the capitulation of the essential pragmatist ? 
Not necessarily. It remains to ask, What sort of purpose is 
the purpose to know? And as we have seen, what makes one 
a pragmatist, essentially, is the insistence that, as in science, so 
in philosophy and all truth-seeking, the idea in question should 
be used as a working-hypothesis, and the truth of the resulting 
judgment tested by the way in which the idea works. An 
idea is constructed to serve, in the guidance of action, as a sub- 
stitute for a further immediate perception of the reality which 
is the subject of the judgment; and if, when the immediate 
perception does occur, it prompts to the same action as did the 
original idea, may it not be claimed, with much force, that the 
idea '^agrees" with, or is practically the same as, the percep- 
tion? 

Here we fall back upon the critical realistic monism of our 
previous discussion, according to which that which is im- 
mediately given in perception is in part an independent reality. 
It should be noted, however, that there is a difference between 
the explicit and the implicit subject of the judgment. The ex- 
plicit subject includes all that is given perceptually and furnished 
apperceptively, while the implicit subject includes all that can 
be truly predicated of the subject, with the exception of tertiary 
quahties and relations.^ The judgment represents in its predi- 
cate what is not presented, or what needs to be represented 
again. Thus while there is in all ordinary cases of true judg- 
ment an identity between the predicate and some phase of the 
implicit subject, there is always, in judgments that have any 
significance, a difference between the predicate and the explicit 
subject. This consideration throws light upon the relation of 

1 See Ch. XIV supra. 



442 THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE 

the new "Law of Significant Assertion" to the traditional 
"Law of Identity." 

May it not be, then, that the test of truth indeed is, as the 
intellectuahst has supposed, some sort of identity between the 
idea and reaHty, but that this identity is some sort of practical 
identity, i.e. identity sufficient for practical purposes, even if 
the question as to just what practical purposes these would need 
to be may have to be left as yet undetermined ? At any rate 
this much may be said, that the cognitive purpose, as distin- 
guished from the purpose to make use of truth, is the purpose to 
obtain or frame an idea which shall prove at least sufficiently 
identical with the reality for practical purposes. Or, to put 
the matter differently, every cognitive purpose is an employee, 
the right-hand man, as it were, of practical purposes, and the 
employee's ultimate satisfaction is in the satisfaction of the 
employers. Sometimes the employee may modify the em- 
ployers' demand, but in general the business of the employee, 
the cognitive purpose, is to secure an idea which is sufficiently 
identical with reality to suit the employers, the practical 
purposes. But, it may be asked, may not the original em- 
ployee, the cognitive interest and activity, become independ- 
ent of its old employers and set up business for itself? 
The answer is that it may indeed act independently of its 
old employers, and in relative independence of practical in- 
terests, but this is not to say that truth about reality — and all 
truth is about reality — can ever be determined in absolute 
independence of all practical demands. In industrial and com- 
mercial affairs, even when the former employee sets up business 
for himself, he is not yet absolutely independent ; he is the em- 
ployee of society, and is made at times to feel most acutely that 
his own satisfaction is to be obtained only in and through the 
satisfaction of the community. And, most obviously, the 
football coach — to refer to Royce's illustration — is an em- 
ployee, the worth of whose activities is to be measured entirely 
by their serviceableness in directing the activities of the team. 
And so it is in the case of the cognitive interest. While it may 
gain independence, so far as particular practical activities are 
concerned, it can never gain absolute independence of the de- 
mands of practical life in general. When Royce admitted that 



CRITICAL MONISM IN LOGICAL THEORY 443 

every idea is a plan of action, he admitted the nose of the prag- 
matist camel into his intellectuaUst tent. 

But, in further insistence upon the important distinction 
between the cognitive purpose and the purpose to make use of 
truth when it is known, we must keep in mind the difference 
between the purpose of the original judgment and the purpose of 
the later statement. The judgment is always relatively sincere ; 
the statement, as we know, need not be so. It is what the re- 
porter takes as true when collecting his materials that we are 
concerned with here, and not with what he gives as true to the 
readers of the daily paper. Understanding the term ''practi- 
cal" in this sense, then, the hypothesis here suggested is that 
the mark of truth is some sort or degree- of practical identity 
of the idea with the reality, of the predicate with the subject. 
And so at the heart of the good essence of pragmatism we 
seem to find representationalism, the good essence of intellect- 
ualism. It is not a representationalism which contradicts prag- 
matism, but one which supplements the pragmatic criterion at 
the same time that it is supplemented by that criterion itself. 
For while current pragmatism may give, even if in too vague 
and general a way, the differentia of the species, viz. practical 
value, it does not bring out sufficiently, if at all, the proximate 
genus, viz. representation of reality. 

This defect of the one-sided current pragmatism it would be 
the aim of what we may call representational pragmatism to 
remedy as far as possible. In our attempt to state the prag- 
matic criterion we found that we had to make use of the in- 
tellectualist's favorite idea of identity, interpreting it, however, 
in a functional way. Similarly, in attempting to define truth 
in terms of representation, may it not be that one can suc- 
ceed only by recognizing the pragmatic criterion ? We seem, 
then, to be on the verge of a definition of truth which shall be a 
"higher synthesis" of intellectualism and pragmatic anti-intel- 
lectualism. In leading up to this definition, however, it is well 
to take account of the fact that representation belongs to things 
outside of explicit judgments, as well as existing in judgments 
which claim to be true. Our problem may therefore be re- 
garded as not only that of finding the specific difference between 
judgments which are true and other judgments ; it is also the 



444 THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE 

problem of finding the specific difference between the represen- 
tation found in true judgments and the representation belonging 
to meanings, apart altogether from explicit judgment. The 
functional analysis of an idea's meaning shows it to be, primarily, 
potential mediation of purpose ; it is representation which can , 
mediate purpose. As we have seen, meaning is essentially 
mean-ing, mediation, being a means; what an idea means, 
ultimately, is what it is a means to ; ^proximately it is the means 
itself, viz. representative material, proxy experience, a product 
of thought with its practical function, either actual or potential. 
Thus, as was noted long since by C. S. Peirce, the purposes which 
the idea can mediate form the key to the meaning of the idea. 
What Peirce ought to have done was to have gone farther and 
used this key, the meaning of meaning, to unlock the meaning 
of truth, and not to have been frightened back by his glimpses of 
pseudo-pragmatism and hyper-pragmatism. Meaning, then, 
is representation which can mediate purpose; but in the case 
of every live judgment, some possible purpose has become actual, 
and in that judgment some meaning is actually employed to 
accomplish that purpose. 

We arrive, then, at the following tentative definition. 
What is taken as truth is representation (of subject by predicate, 
of reality by idea) sufficient to mediate satisfactorily the purpose 
with which the judgment is made} But what is really true must 

1 An approach to this position is briefly indicated in the following sentences 
from E. D. Fawcett's The Individual and Reality, 1909, p. 38 : "Often the agree- 
ment [of propositions with outward fact] may seem inconsiderable, nay, tri- 
fling ; but provided that such agreement forwards a purpose, the proposition or 
arrangement of propositions is sufficiently true. Truth means propositions 
which, in view of our ends, can be taken as, and substituted for, the appearances 
with which they agree." Oliver C. Quick indorses the pragmatic criterion, 
while rejecting the current pragmatic definition of truth. He himself, how- 
ever, leaves truth undefined {Mind, N.S., XIX, 1910, pp. 218-30), and seems 
to consider the formulating of a satisfactory definition impossible {ih., XX, 
1911, pp. 256-7). Quick's position is thus in almost complete antithesis to 
that of Bertrand Russell, who, as we have seen, claims to define the nature of 
truth, while regarding it as having no criterion that can be stated in universal 
terms. J. B. Pratt indorses the pragmatic test of truth, but reverts to a defi- 
nition of truth which sacrifices clearness to simplicity. "Truth," he says, 
"means that the object of which one is thinking is as one thinks it" {What is 
Pragmatism? 1909, p. 67). Pragmatically interpreted, this definition will 
serve ; but intellectualistically interpreted, as it is evidently intended to be, it 
is involved in all the old epistemological and logical difficulties. 



CRITICAL MONISM IN LOGICAL THEORY 445 

he representation sufficient to mediate satisfactorily whatever pur- 
pose or purposes ought to he recognized in making the judgment. 
In other words, real truth is practical identity of idea with reality, 
of predicate with suhject, where the practice in question is ulti- 
mately satisfactory, as well as the mental instrument which serves 
it. 

Now this representational pragmatism is truer to the in- 
tellectualist ideal than intellectualism itself is able to be. 
So long, for example, as the subject is taken as if it were 
a (logical) idea, like the predicate, as it seems to be by 
the idealistic intellectualist, the equating of ''subject" and 
''predicate," being really the equating of one idea or pos- 
sible predicate with another, would in some cases be pos- 
sible, although it could never amount, even here, in any real 
judgment, any judgment that expresses meaning, to an ahso- 
lute identity. But even so, such equation of two abstract predi- 
cates would give no information about reality, the subject- 
matter of which both are, or may be, separately predicated. 
Indeed, even from the practical point of view, two ideas cannot 
be identified save as both are thought of as predicated of the same 
reality, with no practical difference in the consequences ; and 
then the identity is of the practical sort. But when the sub- 
ject is a reality, and not a logical idea considered as if it were a 
reality, although on intellectualist grounds it becomes even 
more hopeless to try to identify subject and predicate, on 
grounds of representational pragmatism, even here, it would 
seem, a solution of the problem is possible. According to rep- 
resentational pragmatism, in true judgment the one essential 
relation of predicate to subject is that of functional equivalence 
in the control of the action required. The judgment is true 
when the idea will do practically as well at least as further 
experience of the thing in stimulating and controlling action 
in adjustment to that thing. 

If it should be objected that the subject of the judgment has 
been previously represented in various ways, and so is different, 
relatively to the thinking subject, from what it would have 
been if it had not been thus represented, this may be readily 
admitted by the representational pragmatist. And if a very 
precise, even if somewhat unwieldy, statement of representa- 



446 THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE 

tional pragmatism is desired, its definition may be stated so as 
to allow for this fact. If the reality which the subject-term {taken 
as predicate) represents {sufficiently for all purposes which ought 
to be considered in making the judgment — except the particular 
purpose or purposes which call for this last judgment), is repre- 
sented by the predicate of this judgment sufficiently for all the 
purposes which ought to be considered in making the judgment, 
whether the purposes which originally called for the judgment, or 
others, then the judgment in question may be taken as true. 

Here we have, then, in contrast with current pragmatism, a 
view which explicitly recognizes the ideal element in truth. The 
practical failure of ordinary pragmatism at this point has been 
in large part the basis for the charge, to which we have 
already referred, that it leads to sordid utilitarianism. 
Truth is to be measured — so this view will have it — not 
simply by the idea's working ''in the way it sets out to work," ^ 
but also by the way in which it does set out to work. Ends, 
and not simply adjustment of means to ends, come in for critical 
examination. The moral quality of the purpose is often re- 
flected in the judgment itself, and learning the truth becomes — 
in its higher reaches almost always, it would seem — a moral 
achievement. 

But while recognizing the ideal character of truth, represen- 
tational pragmatism makes this ideal of truth essentially human. 
It substitutes for the insoluble, artificial problems of current 
epistemology and intellectualist logic, the soluble, real prob- 
lems of the functional psychology and logic of the processes 
of cognition ; and in so far as any practically valuable judgment 
falls short of ideal truth, there are norms by which it may 
be corrected. W. Caldwell's criticism,^ that the doctrine that 
truth should be tested by consequences is useless, seeing that 
omniscience alone could bring together in thought or in imagina- 
tion all the consequences of an assertion, loses much of its weight 
as against a representational pragmatism stated in terms of the 
purposes which ought to be recognized. For it often occurs 
that the consequences are knowable by the individual suffi- 

^ Dewey, Influence of Darwin, p. 150 ; Moore, Pragmatism and Its Critics, 
p. 87 ; Bawden, Principles of Pragmatism, p. 199 ; Schiller, Riddles of the 
Sphinx, 1910, p. 133. 2 Pragmatism and Idealism, 1913, p. 127. 



CRITICAL MONISM IN LOGICAL THEORY 447 

ciently for the purposes which ought to be considered in the 
situation ; and in such cases there is ordinarily no reason to 
suppose that the judgment made will not be permanently 
satisfactory. According to such a pragmatism, even telling 
"the whole truth," whenever it was a moral duty, would be- 
come at the same time a real possibility. It would be tell- 
ing what was, practically speaking, the whole truth, so far as 
all purposes which ought to be recognized were concerned ; and 
except where it was thus a moral duty, it would not be a human 
possibility, under any definition of truth. Truthfulness, simi- 
larly, would consist in the habitual care to make one's state- 
ments always approximate one's own judgments sufficiently for 
whatsoever purposes ought to be recognized in each particular 
situation. 1 Moreover, there may be degrees of approximation 
to the truth and degrees of verification of the truth ; but, given 
the purposes which ought to be recognized, the judgment which 
represents reality sufficiently for these purposes is, from the point 
of view of representational pragmatism, true. Mathematically 
worked out laws, as in physics and astronomy, are only hypothet- 
ically truths, except in so far as they have been verified. Many 
of them have been sufficiently verified empirically for practical 
purposes, and so may be taken as practically true of the actual 
world. If by more critical tests they should be verified more 
completely, this would not make them any truer than they were 
before. But if by means of the more critical tests a discrepancy 
should be found between the mathematically deduced law and 
the actual fact, then for the purposes which dominated these 
tests, the supposed law is not true. If these are purposes which 
ought to be recognized by humanity, then the more accurate 
empirical observation must be regarded as the truth, and not 
the mathematical anticipation. If, however, there is no valid 
human reason for recognizing such hyper-critical purposes, 
there is practically no difference between the two expressions ; 
the one statement is as true, practically, as the other. More- 
over, on this theory it would seem that representations of 
reality sufficient for all practical purposes are not to be rejected 
as untrue simply because of the possibility of making the rep- 

* This does not, of course, decide the case either for or against rigorism in 
ethics. 



448 THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE 

resentation closer, were there any occasion to do so. For ex- 
ample, for the purposes which ought ordinarily to be recog- 
nized, the carrying out of the value of tt to a few decimal 
places gives a practically true judgment ; but in some situations 
a more extended determination is required, so that in the former 
situations this later judgment would have contained irrelevant 
representation, as well as truth. The contradiction between 
the two judgments, therefore, when each is viewed in situ, 
is easily seen to be merely formal and not real. 

But we begin to see that representational pragmatism must 
encounter some very serious difficulties. In the first place, 
what are these ''purposes which ought to be recognized"? 
The obvious preliminary answer is that they must be stated 
ultimately in terms of human welfare, interpreted from a point 
of view in which the distinctly spiritual interests are duly 
dominant. But let us see just what this may be taken to mean. 
The universal human interests are perhaps seven : the hygienic, 
the economic, the (narrowly) social (i.e. interest in others and 
in fellowship with them), the scientific, the aesthetic, the moral, 
and the religious.^ The ''distinctly spiritual interests," as 
those concerned with ultimate and permanently valid ideals, or 
values which transcend the demand of the merely animal life, 
individual and racial, are the scientific, the aesthetic, the moral, 
the religious, and the social — this last in so far as one's fellows 
are viewed as ends rather than as means. A spiritual life is 
one in which the spiritual interests are properly coordinated 
with each other as ultimate ends, and made duly dominant over 
the life. Ultimately, the hygienic and economic interests are 
to be regarded as means to the realization of the spiritual inter- 
ests as represented by the ideals of universal human well-being 
and brotherhood (social), knowledge of the truth (scientific), 
contemplation of the beautiful (aesthetic), perfection of char- 
acter and conduct (moral), and fellowship with God (religious). 

But now, interpreting in the light of this explanation the 
clause, "the purposes which ought to be recognized," we find that 
representational pragmatism, as defined, offers us, for the ascer- 

1 For this classification I am indebted to Professors A. W. Small and C. R. 
Henderson. Professor Henderson's list differs from that of Professor Small in 
making the moral and the religious distinct interests. 



CRITICAL MONISM IN LOGICAL THEORY 449 

taining of truth, a criterion within a criterion. The scientific 
interest is here represented as one of the interests in relation 
to which what claims to be true is ultimately to be tested ; but, 
on the other hand, is not the scientific interest the '^ cognitive 
interest" of which we have spoken, thorough satisfaction of 
which ought to be regarded as all that needs to be sought? 
Indeed, have we not pointed out that what essential pragma- 
tism — and so, representational pragmatism — has undertaken 
to do is to universalize the procedure of the experimental 
sciences? If, on the other hand, it be said that science itself, 
in its judging of the truth, can only seek to represent reality 
sufficiently for all purposes which ought to be recognized, why 
should the scientific interest be mentioned as a separate interest 
which truth must satisfy ? And yet, do we not seem to need to 
include the scientific interest, the disinterested interest in truth, 
in order to guard against too hasty generalization ? 

But there are further difficulties ahead, especially in connec- 
tion with the problem of the permanence of truth. To be sure, 
representational pragmatism would enable one to take a more 
conservative attitude toward this question than obtains in 
current pragmatism. It is of course obvious that, as we 
have seen, even pragmatism, as it is and has been, has often 
shown unnecessary haste in concluding that it must, in order 
to be consistent, maintain that all truths are of but temporary 
validity. But representational pragmatism comes nearer to a 
positive vindication of the permanence of truth. Every honest 
judgment intends to be of permanent validity, and if at any later 
time it is seen to need revision, this is commonly to be explained 
either as due to the fact that the purposes active in the original 
judgment were deficient with reference to the situation, or 
as due to a lack of will or ability for mental thoroughness, so 
that in either case the earher judgment was not really true, 
but only seemed to be so. If any judgment is really true, the pre- 
sumption is in favor of its predicate a ways remaining the idea 
which will represent the reality sufficiently for all purposes which 
ought to be recognized in making the judgment. That many 
of our judgments in practical life are of this character, no one 
really doubts. Nor need we say, with Royce, that such truths 
are accessible only in the realm of our knowledge of the forms 
2g 



450 THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE 

that predetermine all of our concrete activities.^ If that were 
so, we could have no real or permanent truth about anything 
which we are ordinarily practically concerned to know. The 
representational pragmatist can claim not merely hypothetical 
judgments, but many categorical judgments — judgments of 
historical fact for example — as absolutely and permanently 
true ; the hard and fast intellectualist, as we saw, and as Royce 
admits when he says, ''Absolute truth is not accessible to us in 
the empirical world, in so far as we deal with individual phenom- 
ena, '^ 2 is not logically entitled to claim even that much. 

But in connection with what we have just been saying the 
difficulty is just this. On the one hand, in now judging any 
past judgments, our own or those of others, we necessarily 
make use of the criterion of non-contradiction, according to 
which it must be maintained that what was once, strictly speak- 
ing, true is always true, that what we cannot now judge to be 
true, e.g. the Ptolemaic astronomy, never was in reality true. 
But, on the other hand, can we say that the Ptolemaic astron- 
omers did not fulfil representational pragmatism's conditions of 
arriving at the truth ? Did not the geocentric astronomy — 
although it contradicts our modern heliocentric view — repre- 
sent reality sufficiently for all the purposes the early Ptolemaic 
astronomers ought to have considered, in view of the limited 
data accessible at that time ? According to an unsupplemented 
representational pragmatism, when the representation of 
reality satisfies the absolute ''ought" of the moral imperative 
in the making of the judgment, it ought to be absolutely true. 
And yet, in the case of the Ptolemaic astronomy we seem to have 
come upon judgments which, although when made they satis- 
fied the moral imperative, must now be judged to have been 
contrary to fact, erroneous — in fine, absolutely untrue. 

Thus representational pragmatism which seemed to promise 
a solution of the problem of truth, runs into self-contradiction 
and begins itself to suffer disintegration ; it seems about to fall 
apart once more into its constituent elements, intellectualism 
and mere pragmatism. Or, to change the figure, this represen- 
tational pragmatism, which offered so fair a prospect of a via 
media between intellectualism and current pragmatism, seems 

^ William James and Other Essays, p. 251. ^ lb., p. 249. 



CRITICAL MONISM IN LOGICAL THEORY 451 

now, before we have travelled it far, to bear the sign. No 
thoroughfare. Must we then retrace our steps and return to 
either intellectualism or current pragmatism? Neither pros- 
pect is at all inviting. If we choose intellectualism, we must 
resign ourselves to the conclusion — in so far as we may allow 
ourselves to come to any conclusion — that no really true judg- 
ment has been or ever will be made. On the other hand, if 
we choose mere pragmatism, at the very best we shall have to 
face the following dilemma. On the one hand we may say — 
in spite of all that can be said in the name of rationality, con- 
sistency, system — that all judgments which, when made, 
satisfied the practical purposes for which they were made, are 
to be permanently regarded as having been true ; so that there 
are many instances of true judgments which nevertheless con- 
tradict each other — a conclusion which works utter havoc with 
our indispensable everyday notion of truth. Or, on the other 
hand, if we refuse to choose this horn of the pragmatist dilemma, 
we may deny the permanence of truth, as a consequence of which 
we should have to say, for instance, that two thousand years 
ago it was true that the sun revolved about the earth, but that 
nowadays the truth is that the earth revolves about the sun. 
In other words, while in our astronomy we should have to judge 
the theory of the Ptolemaic astronomers untrue, in our pragma- 
tism we should have to judge it true — again a self-contradic- 
tion which, unless corrected, would utterly destroy any usable 
notion of truth. 

Is there then no way of escape from the impasse into which, 
even with our representational pragmatism, we seem to have 
been led? Without going over into anti-conceptualism, which 
would mean the sceptical giving up of the problem of the truth 
of judgments altogether, can we find a unitary criterion and 
formulate a unitary definition of truth, without falling into the 
futilities of either intellectualism or current pragmatism? 
Before we follow any of these counsels of despair, let us see 
whether our representational pragmatism may not be so revised 
and developed as to meet the requirements of the situation in 
which we find ourselves. Manifestly we are entitled to say 
this much, that even when the data are insufficiently accessible 
for full knowledge of the truth — unless, as is not always the 



452 THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE 

case, the situation is one in which no judgment ought to be 
made at all — a 'person has a moral right to believe that that judg- 
ment is true in which the idea (predicate) represents the reality 
judged about sufficiently for oil the purposes which ought to be 
considered in making the judgment. It would have to be ad- 
mitted, of course, that in some cases judgments which one has 
had a moral right to believe to be true have nevertheless been 
shown to have been untrue. For truth, according to our revised 
representational pragmatism, would have to be defined, to bring 
out its distinction from mere morally justified behef, in some 
such way as this : Representation of reality by idea, of subject 
by predicate, such that in all situations calling for decision between 
the judgment in question and its contradictory, it will be found 
satisfactory in view of all the purposes that ought to be considered. 
But how do we know that there are any such judgments ; or, 
since we do seem, as a matter of fact, to have the right to believe 
that many of our judgments are of this sort, what is the criterion 
of this absolute and permanent {i.e. real) truth? How do we 
know true judgments to be true, if there are instances in which 
we do know this? This is a question which will lead us over, 
ultimately, into a discussion of methodology, or the problem 
of proof ; but it must be considered here also. If we are to have 
a real definition of truth, we must discover its real criterion — 
a criterion that can be really used with permanent satisfaction, 
in view of all purposes which ought to be considered. Indeed, 
without such a criterion we should not even be able to main- 
tain that there are any judgments which we have the moral 
right to believe to be true. It has been said that we have this 
right in connection with judgments which represent reality 
sufficiently for the purposes which ought to be considered in 
making the judgment. But the question is always pertinent, 
Is it true that we have considered all the purposes which ought 
to be considered in making the judgment? How can we know 
that the purposes considered are the right ones? Is all that 
we can say simply that they are the right purposes, if it repre- 
sents reality sufficiently for the right purposes to say that they 
are the right purposes? How shall we avoid the suggested 
unending circular regress, and actually get any measuring done 
with our criterion? 



CRITICAL MONISM IN LOGICAL THEORY 453 

The question in this latter instance has thus come to be, 
How do we recognize ultimate (as distinguished from merely 
instrumental) values? And to this, obviously, the answer can 
only be. By immediate experience and appreciation, or, in other 
words, by direct intuition. But may not much the same thing 
be said in answer to the other question as to how we can ever 
know that what we now judge to be true will be permanently 
satisfactory in view of all purposes that ever ought to be con- 
sidered. The answer suggested is that in immediate experience 
of reality we may verify, i.e. intuitively perceive the absolute 
and abiding truth of a judgment. In order to round out our 
revised representational-pragmatic definition of truth, we must 
have recourse, it would seem, not indeed to a Bergsonian anti- 
conceptualism, but to what in Bergson is the positive counter- 
part of that doctrine, viz. intuitionism, the doctrine that truth 
is to be found in an immediate experience of reality. Of course 
truth does not consist in an immediate experience of reality, for 
it is a quality of judgments, which are essentially mediating, 
representational. But the truth of a judgment is indeed 
^' found," discovered in immediate experience, when what its 
predicate represented (i.e. presented virtually, or in proxy 
fashion) is actually presented in the immediate experience 
to which the purpose to verify it (by acting upon it as a 
working hypothesis) leads. All truths which are either ac- 
tually verified or verifiable are of this sort; and it is worth 
noting that for the definition of the truths of science, i.e. 
scientifically verified truths, we must take into account not 
only intellectualism and the pragmatic form of anti-intellectual- 
ism, but the intuitional form of anti-intellectualism as well. 
Indeed our position might well be termed scientific representa- 
tional pragmatism, not only a synthesis of intellectualism and 
current pragmatism, but a further synthesis of representational 
pragmatism and intuitionism. It is the procedure of science 
become conscious of its own fundamental nature.^ We see, 

1 Our synthesis of intellectualism, pragmatism, and intuitionism includes, we 
believe, the valid elements in H. W, Wright's suggestion that intellectual con- 
sistency, technical eflSciency, and emotional harmony are criteria of truth 
(Philosophical Review, XXII, 1913, pp. 606-22. See p. 370, supra). Em- 
pirical intuition does not coincide with "emotional harmony," of course; in 
our opinion the latter must be viewed as a notoriously unreliable, but often very 



454 THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE 

therefore, why it was necessary, in defining truth in repre- 
sentational-pragmatic terms as ''representation of reahty, suf- 
ficient for whatever purposes ought to be considered in making 
the judgment," to include, implicitly if not explicitly, the cog- 
nitive purpose of the scientist. 

But the query may be suggested. Is not this the adoption of a 
new criterion altogether, viz. that of immediate intuition instead 
of, and not merely in supplementation of, the pragmatic cri- 
terion? But to this the answer must be negative. Bergson 
to the contrary notwithstanding, ''intuition without concepts 
is blind," or practically so. For truth at any rate, there must 
be concepts, judgments, representation. And, since the idea is 
never identical with its subject, except for practical purposes, 
we can never have a satisfactory definition of truth (i.e. true 
representation) except in pragmatic terms. Nor can we safely 
take the spontaneous judgments which emerge out of imme- 
diate experience as infallibly true. Practice without intuition 
has often more truth than certainty ; but intuition without 
practice has quite as frequently more certainty than truth. 
And in order adequately to supplement mere intuitionism we 
need more than the bare "negative pragmatism" that Hocking 
has allowed; for, as we have already contended, unless some 
sort of positive pragmatism is justified, not even negative 
pragmatism is true. 

Moreover, to return to a point upon which we have already 
touched, we must never forget that the completely verifying 
perception is often either temporarily or permanently unattain- 
able by human beings, or else not important enough to be sought 
at the necessary expense of something else. Does this neces- 
sarily mean the total cessation of belief, the total absence of 
knowledge? Not according to everyday life, not according to 
science, and not according to a sufficiently critical theory of 
truth. It often occurs that acting upon the idea continues to 
work so uniformly well in connection with its most intimately 
associated practical purposes, that even in the absence of the 
immediately verifying perception, the idea is kept in action, 
and rightly so ; that is, we believe our originally hypothetical 

valuable, variety of the former. Cf. criticism of Hocking's mystical intuition- 
ism, Ch. VIII, supra. See Ch. XV, supra, also. 



CRITICAL MONISM IN LOGICAL THEORY 455 

judgment to be true, and are morally justified in this belief. 
We are practically certain that the idea is practically identical 
with the reality, an immediate experience of which we either 
necessarily, or deliberately but justifiably, forego. And the 
only but all-sufficient justification of this is that the race has 
needed to postulate, and through long and successful experience 
has acquired the inveterate habit of postulating, that nature, 
or reality in general, is dependable.^ Here, again, therefore, 
our revised representational pragmatism is simply the logical 
theory of everyday scientific procedure. 

What, more particularly, a truly scientific procedure is, it 
will be our task to inquire in the following chapter ; but before 
our discussion of the problem of truth is brought to a close, it 
may be well briefiy to consider certain criticisms commonly 
passed upon current pragmatism, in order to see whether our 
revised representational pragmatism can successfully meet these 
incidental, and possibly minor, tests. A charge frequently 
made by absolutists is that pragmatism fails to do justice to the 
transcendent and superhuman character of truth. Our answer 
to this, so far as a scientific representational pragmatism is 
concerned, is to be found in large part in what was said of the 
ideal character of truth ; but in connection with the question as 
to whether there is not an actual superhuman truth, our answer 
would be. Doubtless there may be ; but what is generally meant 
by "absolute truth," or truth as it is for "the Absolute" (of ab- 
solute idealism) , is simply a regulative idea. If absolute truth be 
defined, with Schiller, simply as "truth adequate to every human 
purpose," 2 we are furnished with a standard sufficiently acces- 
sible for our most critical needs, and in this sense the contention 
that we are in possession of absolutely true propositions may be 
readily granted.^ But when the absolutist assumes, or, by 
whatever process, concludes, that there must of necessity actu- 

1 "That things do work together and our needs are satisfied when a certain 
set of postulates are conformed to, is, in so far forth, evidence of the correctness 
of the postulates. . . . The theory is not true because it satisfies our needs, but 
the fact that it satisfies our needs is evidence that the theory fits into the organ- 
ism" which the whole universe seems to be, since "all parts of the universe . . . 
act together" and have apparently "grown to be what they are in organic unity 
of development." (C. L. Herrick, Journal of Philosophy, I, 1904, p. 596.) 

2 Studies in Humanism, p. 213. 3 Cf. p. 389, supra. 



456 THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE 

ally be an eternally existent sum-total and systematically 
unified experienced harmony of all possible true judgments, he 
indulges in speculative dogmatism. Superhuman truth, if 
we are going to speak of it at all, we would do well to call divine, 
rather than absolute ; for while, so far as our present discussion 
is concerned, even of God, existence and attributes are matters 
of speculation, the whole conception is less ambiguous than that 
of 'Hhe Absolute" of current metaphysics. And if we are 
going to speak of God's truth, there is no manifestly vaUd re- 
Hgious reason why it should not be regarded as essentially 
similar to man's. It is surely not a timeless, changeless, pur- 
poseless, absolutely complete representation, in one act of 
thought, of an eternally-complete reahty which is also content 
of an eternally-complete immediate experience; for why, in 
such a case, should there be representation at all? May it 
not more probably be representation, the content of which 
may vary from time to time, and yet which is sufficient always 
to mediate satisfactorily whatever purposes God may have in 
view. This is not to say that God is in every way anthropo- 
noetic, but that if there is such a thing as God's truth, it must 
be essentially similar, or even identical, with man's truth. 

Another important test to be applied to any theory of truth 
is the question whether it is ^'self-critical" or self-refuting. Is 
our scientific representational pragmatism true, according to 
its own definition of truth ? Both absolute intellectualism and 
the absolutely anti-intellectuahstic theory of current pragma- 
tism, are, as has been intimated, self-refuting. On the one 
hand, the idea of an absolute identity between idea and reahty, 
between predicate and subject, is not absolutely identical with 
what functions as truth in actual human experience. On the 
other hand, the idea of mere practical usefulness, or working 
value, of ideas will not always work as a substitute for what 
we mean by truth. But revised, or scientific, representational 
pragmatism is self-critical. To say that truth is representa- 
tion of reahty sufficient for whatever purposes ought to be con- 
sidered by any one who may ever have to decide between that 
judgment and its contradictory, is itself a representation of the 
reality in question (viz. truth), sufficient for whatever purposes 
ought to be considered by any one who may have to decide be- 



CRITICAL MONISM IN LOGICAL THEORY 457 

tween it and its contradictory. Moreover, that any judgment 
(in a given situation in which judgment concerning a certain 
subject-matter is morally required) which represents the reality 
sufficiently for all the purposes which the person making it 
ought to consider, is a judgment which that person has the 
moral right to make and to believe to be true — this itself is a 
judgment which we have not only the moral right, but, we 
would claim, a fully verified scientific right to make. We see 
no reason, then, for rejecting scientific representational pragma- 
tism, the only definition of truth remaining unrefuted. While 
the traditional intellectualism gives the proximate genus of truth 
(representation of reality), but not its specific difference (suffi- 
ciency for all proper practical purposes), and while current prag- 
matism rightly, even if too vaguely, insists upon the specific 
difference, but wrongly ignores the proximate genus, scientific 
representational pragmatism combines the complementary par- 
tial truths of the two positions. 

Finally, there is a formal test of definitions, which may be 
appHed to our definition of truth. L. S. St ebbing has urged 
in criticism of pragmatism that unless the pragmatic dictum, 
"All truths work," is simply convertible, it fails to provide a 
criterion.! This is not quite accurate ; it is not the criterion, 
at least as stated thus, too broadly to be a real criterion^ that 
must be simply convertible, but the definition; but the spe- 
cific difference by means of which the definition is constructed 
is the criterion, the test, par excellence. Our definition of truth, 
however, unlike those of intellectualism and current pragmatism, 
will stand this test. To say. All judgments in which the predi- 
cate represents the subject sufficiently for all purposes which 
ought to be considered at any time when any one may have to 
choose between the judgment in question and its contradictory, 
are true, is as true as our definition of truth, of which it is the 
simple converse. 

It will appear, then, that once more, in our treatment of the 
chief problem of logical theory, we have been led to a position 
that may be characterized as critical monism. We have noted 
the evident unsatisfactoriness of an absolute logical dualism, 

^Mind, N.S., XXI, 1912, p. 471 ; XXII, 1913, p. 250; cf. Pragmatism and 
French Voluntarism, 1915, pp. 154-6. 



458 THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE 

and have seen the finallj^ disappointing character of absolute 
logical monism in its various forms, viz. on the one hand, ab- 
solute intellectualism (intellectualistic absolute logical monism) 
in its epistemologically duaHstic, idealistic, and reaHstic vari- 
eties; and on the other hand, absolute anti-intellectualism 
(anti-intellectuahstic absolute logical monism), whether anti- 
conceptualistic or pragmatic. We are left with but one theory 
which can be regarded as both tenable in the face of attack, 
and positively justifiable, viz. scientific representational prag- 
matism, or, to give other possible designations, critical logical 
monism, critical pragmatic monism, critical pragmatic logical 
monism, intuitional-pragmatic representationalism, or critical 
monism in logical theory.^ 

1 In this and the two immediately preceding chapters I have included, with- 
out the use of quotation marks, some excerpts from my article entitled," Repre- 
sentational Pragmatism," in Mind, N.S., XXI, 1912, pp. 167-81. 



B. THE PROBLEM OF PROOF (METHOD- 
OLOGY) 

CHAPTER XX 
The Problem of Scientific Method 

The problem of mediate knowledge is the problem of proving 
the truth. In the immediately preceding chapters we have 
dealt with what, regarding logic as the normative science of 
the truth of judgments, we take to be the most fundamental 
problem of philosophical logic, or logical theory, viz. the 
problem of truth. We must now take up the remaining 
problem, viz. the problem of proof, which may be regarded as 
the central concern of methodology. But the problem of proof" 
is the problem of the production of certainty of the truth in a 
way that is logically satisfactory. We shall therefore have 
first to consider briefly the nature of certainty in general, and 
of logical certainty in particular. 

Now the problem of certainty is not, in the first instance, a 
logical problem at all, but a psychological one. And probably 
the best available criterion of psychological certainty is readiness 
to act upon the judgment, not tentatively and with a view to 
verification, but, finally, irrevocably. Certainty in this broad 
sense is the state of mind accompanying judgment or belief, 
in which there is such a readiness to act irrevocably, given the 
appropriate situation. (Our view would allow for a real dif- 
ference between knowing, and knowing that we know. And 
yet, if we do not know that we know, and dwell upon this nega- 
tive fact, it may destroy our readiness to act, and this would 
mean the destruction of our knowledge. On the other hand, 
to know that we know is a safeguard to our knowledge; it 
keeps it steady, free from unnecessary fluctuations. And prob- 
ably this is the chief value of a constructive epistemology. 

459 



460 THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE 

It makes for a certainty which is adequate, even after the most 
comprehensive sort of criticism.) 

But there are two main sorts of psychological certaintj^, viz. 
logical certainty, and certainty which falls short of logical 
certainty. Logical certainty may be defined, in preliminary 
fashion, as sufficiently critical psychological certainty, provided 
the term ^'sufficiently critical" be taken seriously enough; 
although it is perhaps quite as informing to say that psychologi- 
cal certainty is sufficiently critical when it is logical. But in 
any case it will readily appear, in view of our previous discus- 
sion, that there are two main varieties of logical certainty, viz. 
that in which the judgment has been fully verified in immediate 
perceptual experience, i.e. in perceptual intuition; and that 
in which such direct perceptual verification is, for some good and 
sufficient reason, unnecessary. 

It may be remarked in this connection — and the considera- 
tion is of great importance for epistemological theory — that on 
the basis of an absolute dualism in epistemology, according to 
which no perceptual intuition of reaHty would be possible, while 
there might perhaps be truth in human judgments, there could 
be no certain knowledge that it was the truth. Indeed truth 
would be indistinguishable from what seemed, as a matter of 
fact, to be a practical substitute for truth. It is only when we 
have had, or can in some way find access to, immediate experience 
of reality, with which we can compare our ideas, that we can 
know that what in any particular case functions satisfactorily is 
really true, and not a mere temporary substitute for the truth. 
It is one thing to know that we have either truth or an ap- 
parently satisfactory temporary practical substitute for it; 
it is quite another thing to know that we have representation 
which is true, because it is the functional equivalent of further 
immediate experience of the reality, so far as all purposes which 
ought to be considered are concerned. The former we might 
have on the basis of a dualistic epistemology; the latter re- 
quires epistemological monism. If there is to be knowledge of 
reality, representations must be comparable with presentations. 
x\nd yet, granted that there is someivhere for us a direct acquaint- 
ance with independent reality, it is perhaps not inconceivable 
that, in view of our general knowledge of the nature of this 



THE PROBLEM OF SCIENTIFIC METHOD 461 

reality, there may have been produced, in certain instances, a 
sufficiently critical or logical certainty of the truth, on the basis 
of a prolonged and varied experience of the satisfactory working 
of the hypothesis, without there ever having been such an im- 
mediate experience of the reality in question as would at once 
have constituted its complete verification. 

But, granting that logical certainty is at least a sufficiently 
critical intellectual readiness to act irrevocably upon an idea or 
proposition, our discussion of the problem of mediate knowledge 
will not be complete until we shall have treated of the method 
of the production of this sufficiently critical intellectual readi- 
ness, or logical certainty, this certainty of truth resting upon ade- 
quate experiential grounds ; in other words, we must now take 
up the problem of the scientific method of proof, or of the pro- 
duction of logical certainty. And when we call our problem one 
of scientific methodology, we assume, of course, that the tradi- 
tionalistic method, of resting finally upon some external au- 
thority, is out of the question here. What we are seeking is 
a method fitted to be employed by all independent investigators 
and thinkers. The scientist is not satisfied simply to know, or 
even to know that he knows ; his ideal is to know how he knows, 
in order that he may proceed with sure and steady step to still 
further intellectual conquests. Indeed, science may be re- 
garded as including not only systems of verified judgments 
about reahty, but also an adequate system of verification. How, 
then, does the scientist, as such, come to know? 

As we confront this methodological problem, we find, as in 
the case of each of our previous investigations, that the points of 
view chiefly represented may be classified under an absolute 
dualism and the two corresponding one-sided absolute monisms. 
In this case over against the absolute methodological dualism we 
find on the one hand a rationalistic absolute methodological 
monism, and on the other hand an empirical absolute methodo- 
logical monism. The absolute dualism need not detain us long. 
What we have in mind here is simply the widespread doctrine 
that there are two methods of proof, radically different from 
each other and irreducible to any common denominator, other 
than that they are both methods of producing logical certainty, 
or proof. We refer, of course, to deduction and induction, and 



462 THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE 

to the common tendency to interpret the former after the 
manner of pure rationaHsm and the latter in accordance with 
pure empiricism. But the question naturally arises as to why 
there should be two ultimately different ways of doing one 
thing. Unquestionably dualism is to be accepted either only 
tentatively, or only as a last resort, because of the failure 
to establish, on sufficiently critical grounds, some form of 
monism. 

We turn at once therefore to an examination of certain views 
which represent more or less completely a rationalistic ab- 
solute monism in methodology. The tendency of pre-Kantian 
rationalism toward this extreme is now fully recognized. Des- 
cartes, dissatisfied with all that claimed to be science in his 
day, with the sole exception of mathematics, undertook to follow 
the mathematical model in philosophy, proceeding by careful de- 
duction from whatever premises should be found, in spite of 
the most rigorous criticism, to admit of no reasonable doubt.^ 
Spinoza, an apt pupil, followed with his Renati des Cartes Prin- 
cipiorum philosophice pars I et II., more geometrico demonstratce, 
and his Ethica, ordine geometrico demonstrata. And according 
to Leibniz, in so far as we are empiricists, which we are in three- 
fourths of our actions, we simply "act in like manner as ani- 
mals'' ; it is only the knowledge of eternal and necessary 
truths {i.e. truths arrived at by deduction from definitions, 
axioms, postulates, and primary principles which have no 
need of proof) which distinguishes us from mere animals and 
gives us the sciences.^ 

During the past few decades there has appeared, largely under 
the influence of the mathematicians, a recrudescence of this 
highly rationalistic tendency in methodology. One of the 
frankest expressions of this tendency is to be found in the recent 
essay on " The Principles of Logic," by Louis Couturat. " Dem- 
onstration," this author insists, "consists in deducing from 
given premises or hypotheses the consequences or conclusions 
which they formally impty in virtue of the laws of Logic. From 
the algorithmical point of view it consists in passing from prem- 
ises to conclusions by means of transformations permitted 
by the laws of the calculus. There can be no logical and correct 

1 Discourse on Method, Parts I and II. 2 Monadology, § § 28-35. 



THE PROBLEM OF SCIENTIFIC METHOD 463 

demonstration except at this price ; we must not take a single 
step which is not justified by the logical laws : all recourse to 
* evidence' or to 'intuition' must be rigorously excluded."^ 
Similarly Bertrand Russell avers that what is called induction 
is either disguised deduction or a mere method of making 
plausible guesses.- ''In the final form of a perfected science, it 
would seem," he says, "that everything ought to be deductive." ^ 
Much more, then, from this point of view, is the simple arithmeti- 
cal process of "demonstration by recurrence," which Poincare 
insists is "mathematical induction," ^ to be regarded as nothing 
but deduction.^ 

Now this monistic methodological doctrine, that no method 
of proof is scientific except deduction, and that deduction is 
absolutely non-empirical, independent of intuition,^ is closely 
related to recent developments of formal logic. We refer to 
the new "symbolic logic," or "logistic," which is offered as a 
more exact "science of logical form" than the traditional syllo- 
gistic logic. This symbolic logic, it may be noted, is, like the 
syllogistic logic it is intended to displace, the logic of consistency 
simply ; it is the science of the logical form of abstract science. 
It is the science of hypothetical truth ; but, inasmuch as the hypoth- 
esis in question may be either unknown to be true or known to 
be untrue, it cannot be said to be the logic of truth. The 
sciences whose procedure it describes assert implications rather 
than facts. Ileal logic, the logic of real or categorical truth!' 
is the science of the logical form of descriptive, empirical 
science. 

In support of the statement that recent deductive or rational- 

1 Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences, edited by Windelband and Ruge, 
Vol. I, p. 184. 

^Principles of Mathematics, 1903, p. 11. 

3 Our Knowledge of the External World as a Field for Scientific Method in Phi- 
losophy, 1914, p. 34. 

^ Science and Hypothesis, Eng. Tr., 1905, pp. 7-16. 

5 See E. B. Holt, The Concept of Consciousness, pp. 11, 12. The view is 
common. 

6 We would regard "intuition" not as absolutely a priori in the case of space 
and time, or anywhere else, but as relatively a priori and relatively empirical 
(see Ch. XVI, supra) ; so that, from our point of view, the appeal directly to 
intuition would be mediately to experience. 

' Cf. F. Bacon, Novum Organum, Bk. I, Aphorisms 11-14; J. S. Mill, A Sys- 
tem of Logic, Bk. II, Ch. Ill, § 9 ; F. S. Schiller, Formal Logic, 1912, p. 8. 



464 THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE 

istic monism in methodology is intimately bound up with the 
new formal logic, we would cite the opinion of Bertrand Russell 
that now, 'Hhanks to the progress of symbolic logic, especially 
as treated by Peano," the Kantian view that mathematical 
reasoning is not strictly formal, but always uses ''intuitions" 
(by which term, following Kant, he means the a ^priori knowl- 
edge of space and time, whereas Poincare speaks of the intui- 
tion of pure number), is "capable of a final and irrevocable 
refutation." '' By the help of the ten principles of deduction 
and ten other premises of a general logical nature," he contin- 
ues, " all mathematics can be strictly and formally deduced." ^ 

Now if, as has been intimated, abstract sciences cannot be 
said to assert more than implications, or hypothetical truths, 
and if, consequently, these ''hypothetical truths" {i.e. the 
apodosis, apart from the protasis) may be actually untrue, we 
must not accept without further question even the conciliatory 
statement of the mathematicians, that when mathematical 
entities (such as non-Euclidean space or numerically infinite 
collections) are said to exist, it is only mathematical or logical 
existence, i.e. freedom from contradiction, that is meant. So 
far as anything that purely formal logic can take account of 
is concerned, these entities may be said to be free from con- 
tradiction ; their existence follows logically from certain assump- 
tions. But this does not mean that they can be said to be 
"free from contradiction" so far as real logic, the logic of truth, 
is concerned. The descriptive sciences, the logical form of 
which real logic undertakes to describe, are always open toward 
reality. All relevant truth, even that which is still undiscov- 
ered, is potentially a part of such a science. Only that, then, 
which is in agreement with fact can be said to be, in relation to 
the other parts of the science, free from contradiction, or to 
have logical existence, so far as the logic of truth is concerned. 

For the sake of greater definiteness upon this important 
point, we shall deal in greater detail with the illustrations to 
which we have referred. In the geometry of Bolyai and 
Lobachevski the notion of non-Euclidean or "curved" space 
is introduced hy the assumption that more than one parallel 

^ Principles of Mathematics, p. 4. Cf . Foundations of Geometry, 1897, where 
it is asserted that projective geometry is "wholly a priori." 



THE PROBLEM OF SCIENTIFIC METHOD 465 

to a given straight line may be drawn through any given point. 
Assuming the possibiHty of such a pluraHty of parallels through 
a given point in real space, then it follows that real space is 
''curved" (non-Euclidean) ; and so also if it be assumed that 
no parallel can be drawn. But the question remains : Is 
there any reason at all for making such assumptions in a science 
of real space, and so for supposing that real space is non-Euclid- 
ean? 

The case of numerically infinite collections is similar. A 
large degree of abstraction from the concrete and empirical 
was accomplished by means of Dedekind's theory of number, 
according to which the fundamental and original idea of num- 
ber is obtained by abstraction from all special characters, in- 
cluding quantity, of the group of numbered objects, with the 
single exception of the relation of order between those objects. 
Numbers would then be primarily ordinal, and the cardinal 
numbers derivative, the result of making an aggregate of num- 
bered objects, or of abstracting still further from order. ^ With 
this non-quantitative view of number there seemed to be less 
call for objection, on logical grounds, to the notion of series 
and collections numerically infinite. The new definition of 
infinite, anticipated by Bolzano,^ and worked out by Dede- 
kind ^ and Georg Cantor,^ as a collection which is similar to a 
proper part of itself, i.e. which is such that its elements can be 
set out in a relation of one-to-one correspondence with those of 
a proper part of itself, was made to seem a logically permissible 
concept; there could be no objection in the nature of any 
''intuition" of the necessarily finite character of all quantity. 
It was regarded as quite demonstrable that there are, within 
the realm of consistent mathematical definitions, infinite sys- 
tems, as, for example, one's own system of possible thoughts, 

1 R. Dedekind, Was Bind und Was Sollen die Zahlen ? Nos. 73, 161 ; cf. 
Couturat, L'infini mathematique, pp. 334-5 ; Royce, The World and the Individual, 
Vol. I, pp. 528-30. A similar development, in even greater detail and rigor, 
but without the emphasis upon the primacy of ordinal numbers, is to be found 
in Frege (Die Grundlagen der Arithmetik, 1884, etc. Cf . Whitehead and Russell's 
Principia Mathematica) . 

2 Paradoxien des Unendlichen, 1851, § 20. 

3 Op. cit., No. 64. 

* "Ein Beitrag zur Mannigfaltigkeitslehre," Crelle's Journal, Vol. LXXXIV, 
1878, pp. 242-58. Cf. Frege, op. cit., §§ 84-6. 
2h 



466 THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE 

including, as it does, a thought about each thought in the 
system.^ 

Now this non-EucHdean geometry and mathematics of the 
infinite would be quite harmless philosophically, if it were 
always clearly understood that, properly speaking, as we have 
intimated, and as even Russell reminds us, nothing is affirmed 
therein except implications. ^ But besides asserting, as they 
are entitled to do, that the conclusions are consistent with the 
premises, "logisticians^' commonly assume that there was 
nothing logically objectionable in the initial assumption of two 
parallels to a given straight line through one and the same 
given point, or in Dedekind's and Cantor's definition of an 
infinite system. It is assumed that there can be no objection 
to the assertion that non-Euclidean or ''curved" space exists, 
or that there exist numerically infinite series and collections, 
provided it be understood that existence means logical exist- 
ence, freedom from contradiction.^ This accounts for the 
fact that logisticians seem commonly to regard it as more or 
less of a '' toss-up'' as to whether or not real space is non- 
Euclidean, and as to whether or not there exist infinite collec- 
tions. It has become the fashion, under the influence of logis- 
tic, to maintain that perhaps, even though the finest practical 
geometrical measurements fail to give us the slightest reason 
to suppose it, real space may nevertheless be ''curved" or, 
if Euclidean, of more than three dimensions. 

But let us take geometry as a science of real space. And 
let us assume the validity of the principle of parsimony, accord- 
ing to which, since there is no necessity for the assumption of 
either non-Euclidean or four-dimensional space, space must 

1 Dedekind, op. ciL, No. 66 ; cf. Bolzano, op. cit., § 13 ; Cantor, Grundlagen 
einer allgemeinen Mannigfaltigkeitslehre ; Couturat, Uinfini mathematique ; 
Russell, Principles of Mathematics, I, pp. 143-4, 147, 194, 357-8 ; Philosophical 
Essays, pp. 77-8 ; Our Knowledge of the External World as a Field for Scientific 
Method in Philosophy, Chs. VI, VII. Royce, op. cit., I, Supplementary Essay, 
especially pp. 501-14. A further tendency to abstract from experienced reality 
is seen in the doctrine that the indemonstrable axioms with which pure mathe- 
matics begins are really disguised definitions. (Couturat, referred to by 
Poincar6, Science et Methode, pp. 161, 175-6. ) 

2 Principles of Mathematics, p. 5 ; cf . Royce, William James and Other 
Essays, p. 239. 

3 Royce, World and the Individual, 1, p. 511, note; cf. Poincar6, Science et 
Methode, p. 162. 



THE PROBLEM OF SCIENTIFIC METHOD 467 

be regarded as Euclidean and simply tridimensional. On this 
basis it becomes clear that the hypothesis of more than one 
parallel to a given straight line through a given point leads to 
absurdity. It introduces into the intended science of real 
space an element of mutual contradiction between propositions. 
The hypothesis must therefore be rejected as imtrue. And so 
we would claim to be justified in contradicting the assertion 
that, so far as we can say, space is as likely as not either non- 
Euchdean or four-dimensional. For such an assertion there 
has been found not a single good reason. The theory has not 
even been shown to be a necessary postulate of '^ practical 
reason.'* As a scientific hypothesis it grossly violates, as we 
have seen, the principle of parsimony. It runs counter to 
practical need, to common sense, and to immediate intuition. 
The only thing that can be said for the new geometries is that 
they show that it is hypothetically true that space is either 
curved or of four dimensions ; i.e. space is of this sort, if some- 
thing is true, which, as a matter of fact, we are certain enough 
for all practical purposes, is untrue. 

And so also with regard to the notion of infinite collections. 
Not only do we not know that there are such collections ; the 
notion itself, we would say, is unscientific and — in our view 
of logic as being properly the logic of truth and not of mere 
consistency — illogical. In the first place, to assume such a 
collection violates the principle of parsimony; no one, so far 
as we know, has experienced such a collection, nor is there any 
scientific need of assuming it. Moreover, experience and 
*' rational intuition," when we are sufficiently critical, disallow 
the notion. An infinite collection, if there could be such a 
thing, would be a collection such that adding to it would not 
increase it, and subtracting from it would not diminish it. 
But we know, by intuition capable of enduring the severest 
criticism, that there can be no such collection. Other condi- 
tions remaining the same, "adding to" involves ''increasing"; 
and so the definition, when the meaning of its terms is considered, 
is seen to be simply self-contradictory. Expressing the defini- 
tion in ordinal terms does not help; an ordinal number, as 
defined by logisticians, is the whole series from the first up 
to that number taken in that order, so that it really involves 



468 THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE 

a corresponding cardinal number. It is commonly supposed 
that the number of real points in any given Hne is infinite. 
But a real point must be a location which, under conditions 
conceivable without contradiction, is discriminahly different 
from any other location. A point that is not, under any really 
conceivable conditions, discriminahly different, is not a dif- 
ferent point. This never takes us beyond a finite number of 
real points in any real hne. Indeed, to suppose a numerical 
infinite leads to the ''Cantorian antinomies" and others, such 
as that there are both more and no more points in space than 
there are whole numbers in the series of numbers — an out- 
come which ought to be regarded as the redudio ad absurdum 
of the notion of the numerical actual infinite.^ We admit, to 
be sure, that it is sometimes convenient to use this fiction of an 
infinite collection, in spite of its self-contradiction. But the 
doctrine that all convenient fictions are true is a doctrine that 
ought not to be dignified with the name pragmatism ; it is the 
worst possible sort of what we have called pseudo-pragmatism. 
If, then, these notions are not even logically unobjectionable — 
as, from the point of view of real logic, they certainly are not — 
it surely cannot properly be maintained that the objects in- 
tended by them exist.^ 

Our position, then, is that since real science is fundamentally 
description of reahty, and real logic the science of the form of 
thought necessary for arriving at the truth about reahty, 
'^ abstract .science" is to be regarded, in proportion to its ab- 
stractness, as merely instrumental to real science, while systems 
of conclusions which are simply consistent with arbitrary and 
experience-contradicting assumptions are not, properly speaking, 
real science at all. We would agree with Alfred Sidgwick and 
F. C. S. Schiller ^ that our a priori laws and universal proposi- 
tions must be interpreted in the light of experience, apphed 

1 Cf. Poincare, Science et Methode, pp. 152-5, 201-3, 212-13 ; Dernieres 
Pemees, pp. 132-7. 

2 Sometimes the doctrine of an actual infinite is welcomed because of its 
agreement with other philosophical doctrines, which the philosopher is inter- 
ested in defending, such as the concrete objective idealism of Royce. See 
The World and the Individual, I, Supplementary Essay. 

3 See Sidgwick, "Applied Axioms," Mind, N.S., XIV, 1905, pp. 42-57; The 
Application of Logic, 1910, etc. ; Schiller, Formal Logic, 1912 ; Humanism, 
pp. 85-94 ; Studies in Humanism, pp. 8, 9 . 



THE PROBLEM OF SCIENTIFIC METHOD 469 

to reality as experienced, and verified, before they can be 
logically regarded as true of reality. We may also refer to the 
distinction, which goes back to Mill,^ between induction, as the 
scientific process of establishing general propositions, and 
deduction, as the exhibition and use of the product of that 
scientific process. This distinction may easily be pressed too 
far, however; no demonstration, to one's self or to others, of 
truth about reality is possible either inductively or deductively, 
it would seem, without reference to and dependence upon 
experience, either directly or through 'intuition." 

Logistic, though it claims to contain all that is good in meth- 
odology, turns out indeed, on closer scrutiny, to be not a method 
at all. It is a science of certain hypothetical objects, objects 
which, as we have just seen, are often so very hypothetical as 
scarcely to merit the appellation '^possible." But also from 
another side we find the claims of the logisticians extravagant. 
Russell seems to regard all sciences as merely appUed logistic, 
— logistic with the x's and y's replaced by hydrogen and carbon. 
All that is system in any sense is logistic. But on examination 
of the systematic connections used by logisticians, for instance 
''implication," ^ we find reason to suspect that the logisticians' 
systematic connections have suffered an abstraction, and even 
transformation, of such an extreme sort that the notions of 
relevance and intimacy of connection actually necessary in 
dealing with concrete proofs have been generalized away. 
From our point of view, according to which logic is the science 
of the sort of processes of thought that must be employed in 
order to realize the ideal of truth in our judgments, such ab- 
straction is most objectionable, and the importance of logistic 
is much diminished thereby. 

But we would suggest a further criticism of rationalistic 
methodology. Can even logical consistency be shown without 
any appeal to ''intuition," and so, ultimately, to experience? 
It may be remarked that since the publication of Russell's 
Principles of Mathematics the list of twenty principles and 
fundamental premises, which were supposed to be adequate 
as a basis for mathematics, has been greatly revised by the 

1 System of Logic, Bk. II, Ch. III. 

2 My attention has been called to this point by Dr. H. T. Costello. 



470 THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE 

author — a fact which would seem to indicate that the processes 
of science are not so purely deductive as was supposed. One is 
reminded, in this connection, of Poincare's criticism, that not 
o^ily do the indemonstrable propositions assumed at the outset 
involve ''a new act of intuition," but it is a mistake to suppose 
that these original appeals to intuition are the last that will be 
necessary for mathematics.^ Not only is ''the principle of com- 
plete induction,'' according to Poincare, " at once necessary to 
the mathematician and irreducible to logic " ; he claims 
that logic itself is sterile, until fertilized by intuition, except 
that in certain cases it is able to engender the antinomy.^ 

We would therefore have to reject as untenable what we have 
called rationalistic absolute methodological monism, i.e. the 
tendency to hold that pure deduction, without any dependence, 
however mediately, upon experience, and this alone, is adequate 
to give us scientific knowledge about reahty, or even about 
what is logically possible. Granted such dependence upon 
experience or ''appeal to intuition" as may be found necessary 
in deduction, we would admit that the deductive sciences, 
however abstract, do give us knowledge of impHcations, and 
thereby also indirectly knowledge about one concrete reality, 
viz. the human mind, or the necessities of human thought. 
But with reference to objective existence in general, no abstract 
deductive science can be known to lead to true results, unless 
all the indemonstrables assumed are known actually to exist; 
and even here, as we shall contend, prior to empirical verifica- 
tion, the results can, without dogmatism, be taken as valid of 
reality only in view of our genetic doctrine that the fundamental 
categories of human thought have been moulded upon an im- 
mediately experienced independent reality. 

Before closing this critique of absolute rationahstic monism 
as a methodological doctrine, some attention should be given to 
the employment in philosophy, especially recently, of the so- 
called dialectical method. In Hegel's system the dialectical 
method has a fundamental place, and is closely integrated with 
his metaphysical doctrine. The truth, in his theory, is the 

1 Science et MSthode, pp. 175-6 ; cf. pp. 177-8, 192, 195, 207-8. 

2 "Les math^matiques et la logique," Revue de metaphysique et de morale, 
XIII, 1905, p. 817 ; Science et Methode, pp. 211-12. 



THE PROBLEM OF SCIENTIFIC METHOD 471 

concrete universal, i.e. the World or Reality as an organized 
whole ; and this truth, the Absolute Idea which is Absolute 
Reality, philosophy seeks to possess. The concepts of the 
understanding, useful as they are in the special sciences and in 
common life, give us at the best something less than the truth, 
mere abstractions instead of the whole. But there is even in 
ordinary finite thought a tendency to transcend itself and to 
reach out toward the Absolute Idea, and this tendency mani- 
fests itself in the contradictions which arise in common thought 
and demand some more adequate concept for their solution. 
Thus thought takes on a dialectical movement, tending from 
thesis through antithesis to a higher synthesis until finally the 
Absolute Idea is attained. 

Now it is true enough that rational reflection does tend to fall 
into this dialectical form, and where there is constant depend- 
ence upon further experience to furnish the contradictions 
to our earlier theses, there can be no vaHd objection from the 
standpoint of methodology. But the Hegelian dialectic is 
sometimes interpreted — as by McTaggart recently, for example 
— as dependent upon experience for its first concept only, the 
bare concept of being, and thereafter developing by positing 
over against this concept its contradictory, and then overcoming 
the opposition by means of a higher concept, which necessarily 
appears as involved in the synthesis of the antithetical concepts. 
For example, the first triad in Hegel's metaphysical dialectic 
might almost be put in the form of a conundrum. When is 
being not-being? to which the answer seems to be. When it is 
becoming. 1 Now this doctrine of McTaggart — whether it is 
also what Hegel meant to teach is more doubtful — may very 
well be called a rationalistic absolute methodological monism. 
With the exception of the first step, the whole process of dis- 
covering and proving the truth about reality is accomplished, 
it is claimed, by pure reason alone, without the aid of experience. 

But there are two criticisms to be made. On the one hand 
the dialectic, as McTaggart actually employs it, is by no means 
independent of empirical data; the higher synthesis is really 
taken in each case from the fund of general knowledge which has 

1 See J. M. E. McTaggart, Studies in the Hegelian Dialectic; Studies in 
Hegelian Cosmology. 



472 THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE 

grown out of past experience. Even ''becoming" refuses to 
appear as the mere result of compounding ''being" and "not- 
being" ; it is plucked fresh from the fields of direct intuition, of 
immediate experience. But, on the other hand, the dialectic, 
as McTaggart conceives it, if followed out faithfully, would soon 
lead the thinker, as may readily be imagined, into a barren 
desert of meaningless abstractions. Our conclusion, then, is 
that a rationalistic absolute monism in methodology, aiming, 
whether as deductive science or dialectical philosophy, to escape 
all dependence upon experience for either invention or verifica- 
tion, neither ought to be nor can be applied with consistency. 

We shall now turn to an examination of empirical absolute 
monism in methodology. The empiricist movement through- 
out the history of modern philosophy has been primarily method- 
ological in interest. The course of its history, however, may 
be viewed as exhibiting, twice over, the tendency to pass from 
the original methodical appeal to experience, with full confidence 
in the power of thought adequately to interpret this experience, 
to a position of scepticism with reference to the value of thought 
for knowledge, and an abandonment to the immediate data of 
experience. The first of these movements is that from Bacon 
to Hume ; the second, that from Comte to Bergson. Between 
Hume and Comte stands Kant, siding for the most part with 
the empiricists as against dogmatic rationalists, in so far as 
scientific method is concerned, but partaking of both the scepti- 
cism of Hume and the positivism to be developed by Comte. 

Francis Bacon, reacting from the experience-defying specu- 
lative dogmatism of the scholastics, set up as the ideal for the 
thinker an unbiassed and methodical investigation of the laws 
of nature, with a view to mastery over the forces of nature. 
Reasoning power he regarded as of very insignificant importance 
in this task, as compared with the possession of the ''novum 
organum," the new inductive method of investigation. The 
empirical method of the "interpretation of nature," he compared 
to the use of a compass and a ruler in drawing circles and straight 
lines, with which the unpractised man is able to obtain good 
results, whereas the rationalistic dogmatist, pretending to an 
"anticipation of nature" by means of thought alone, is to be 
likened to a draughtsman who may be more talented and expert, 



THE PROBLEM OF SCIENTIFIC METHOD 473 

but who obtains inferior results, because he is compelled to 
operate without instruments. Indeed, in view of nature's 
great subtilty, a purely speculative philosophy of nature is but 
a kind of insanity. No great progress in learning is to be looked 
for through ''anticipations"; ''our only hope is in genuine 
Induction," ascending to axioms from particulars, and only 
from axioms so constructed descending again to particular 
effects.! 

Bacon's advocacy of empirical methods was very timely; 
but his methodology was too one-sided, in that he did not 
sufficiently recognize the fact which is so full of difficulty for the 
extreme empiricist, that there are "certain conceptual order- 
systems whose exactness of structure far transcends, in ideal, 
the grade of exactness that can ever be given to our physical 
observations themselves." ^ For such oversight, however, 
Bacon is less to be blamed than are many of his empiricist suc- 
cessors, for whom a rapidly increasing body of mathematically 
exact "natural laws" has been available. This fact must be 
fairly dealt with in our constructive undertaking. In the 
extreme empiricism and consequent scepticism of Hume, we see, 
by way of contrast, how indispensable to science is the con- 
structive activity of reason. 

Comte's positivism deliberately aimed to turn away from all 
dogmatic speculations concerning what is beyond the realm of 
experience, and to confine intellectual effort to a simple scien- 
tific description of the phenomenal and verifiable. Metaphys- 
ics he regarded as a vain attempt to support the fantastic 
structures of traditional theology, fast toppling under the 
attacks of the empirical sciences. With the progress of induc- 
tive science, metaphysics becomes more abstract, seeking to 
explain phenomena by abstract substances or essences, and 
events by final causes. The final stage of metaphysical thought 
is reached when events are explained as being caused by nature 
and natural causes; whereas in the final state of thought 
nothing will be attempted beyond a formulation of the laws of 

* Novum Organum, Preface, and Bk. I, aphorisms 1-3, 9-14, 19-21, 26-30, 
103, etc. 

2 Royce, "The Principles of Logic," in Windelband and Ruge's Encyclopedia 
of the Philosophical Sciences, Vol. I, p. 88. 



474 THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE 

phenomena on the basis of a simple generahzing description of 
the facts of observation and experiment.^ 

John Stuart Mill made important contributions to the tech- 
nique of induction, to some of which we must presently refer; 
but he is important in this immediate connection as marking a 
rather close approximation to what we have styled an empirical 
absolute monism in methodology. Influenced by the English 
tradition of empiricism and by the positivism of Comte, as well 
as directly by the rapidly developing empirical sciences, he 
undertook to construct a logic in which induction, as the process 
of inference from particulars to particulars, should appear as 
the only scientific method. '^Deduction" is still recognized but 
only as the process of reading off the signs previously employed 
to register former inferences from particulars to particulars. 
Ratiocination is simply the interpretation and appHcation of 
inductions ; the syllogism can do no more than dole out driblets 
of old knowledge as they may be needed ; it always involves a 
begging of the question and can never lead to any really new 
knowledge. The '^ deductive sciences," such as arithmetic and 
geometry, are really inductive ; they differ from the obviously 
inductive sciences in that they confine themselves to interpret- 
ing old inductions, without needing to resort to new observa- 
tion and experiment. Their theorems are necessary truths 
only in the sense of necessarily following from hypotheses. 
The axioms employed, many of them surreptitiously or uncon- 
sciously, are all experimental truths, inductions from the evi- 
dence of the senses. The definitions are mere verbal proposi- 
tions, explanations of the meaning of a name, together with an 
implied assumption of the existence of things corresponding 
to them; in other words, they are axioms also, old inductions 
in disguise.^ 

There is much in Mill's doctrine that is suggestive and at 
least partially justified; but his general position undoubtedly 
calls for criticism. Familiar illustrations from coromon life, 
such as that of the startling discovery, in the well-known 
anecdote, that since the abbe's first penitent was a murderer, 
and since a certain nobleman was the abbe's first penitent, that 

1 Cours d'une philosophic positive, passim. 

» A System of Logic, Bk. I, Ch. 8 ; Bk. II, Chs. 1-6. 



THE PROBLEM OF SCIENTIFIC METHOD 475 

nobleman was to be regarded as a murderer, show that deduction 
can of itself lead at times to important new knowledge. More- 
over, the constantly increasing body of new knowledge concern- 
ing logical and mathematical relationships is further presump- 
tive evidence of the fecundity of deduction. And if indeed it 
should turn out to be a tenable position that there is throughout 
the deductive sciences a constant dependence upon empirical 
verification for certainty, still, in the light of the achievements 
of symbolic logic, that dependence must be much less obvious, 
essentially, than Mill supposed.^ The further question as to 
whether Mill is right in reducing definitions to axioms, or 
Couturat in reducing axioms to definitions, or whether both are 
wrong, we shall reserve for consideration in the constructive 
part of our discussion. 

''I should maintain," saysRoyce, ''that the mystics are the 
only thoroughgoing empiricists in the history of philosophy." ^ 
The truth of this statement may not be very obvious in the 
case of religious mysticism, but the fundamental features of 
Bergson's philosophy would indicate that at the extreme of 
methodological empiricism we are bound to find a theoretical 
mysticism. Nor are we likely to find in recent philosophy a 
more pronounced example of empirical absolute methodological 
monism than in the methodological doctrine of Bergson and 
his disciple LeRoy, whatever we may think of their actual 
practice. Not only is deduction incompetent, according to 
Bergson, to give us genuine knowledge about that which is 
ultimately real; even induction is not sufficiently empirical. 
Both intellectual processes are dependent upon our intuition of 
space, as is also even our idea of number ; but, inasmuch as 
space and the spatial world are to some extent constructs of 
finite intelligence (although having also something to do with 
the development of intellectual forms), neither logical process 
can be depended upon for knowledge, because both tend in- 
evitably to spatialize the reality with which they deal. Only 
" pure perception " and other modes of intuition such as we 

1 Russell, Principles of Mathematics, I, pp. 3, 4, 10, 106, 373-4, 457-8 ; Royce, 
Sources of Religious Insight, pp. 94-6, 98 ; William James and Other Essays, 
pp. 211-12, 246-9. 

2 The World and the Individual, I, p. 81. 



476 THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE 

approximate in our immediate awareness of the life of our own 
self which endures, can be truly cognitive in any ultimate or 
metaphysical sense. • Even induction should be used only as a 
stepping-stone to intuition. Even science at its best, according 
to LeRoy, is the instrument of action only.^ In this way, 
then, as happened before in the case of Hume, an extremely 
monistic empirical methodology undermines the very founda- 
tion upon which it originally proposed to stand. 

We are now ready to consider the possibility of combining 
the justifiable elements of both the rationalistic and the em- 
pirical form of methodological monism, without leaving an 
unexplained absolute dualism of reason and experience, of 
deduction and induction. Before attempting a constructive 
statement on our own account, it will be helpful to say something 
of the contributions made toward such a critical methodological 
monism by J. H. Poincare. First of all, however, we shall refer 
to the methodological position of Kant ; for while it would be 
vain to look within the limits of the Kantian system for any 
very satisfactory illustration of the critical monism which 
seems to be demanded in methodology, our exposition of the 
theory of Poincare will be facilitated if the main features of 
Kant's doctrine are borne in mind. 

Having retained and developed further his inherited rational- 
istic doctrine of the synthetic activity of the mind, Kant might 
have been expected to be found favorably disposed to the doc- 
trine of the possibility of extending our knowledge of reality 
by means of purely deductive processes, or by a non-empirical 
dialectic. As a matter of fact he accepted the knowledge-value 
of such synthetic activity — in so far as he can be said to have 
accepted it at all — only within the limits of ''possible human 
experience." Strictly speaking, for Kant not even within 
actual human experience can the synthetic activity of mind 
give genuine knowledge of reality. The forms of mental activ- 
ity are declared to be absolutely a priori; consequently the 
object of actual sense-experience must be regarded as a con- 
struct, essentially different in constitution even from the bare 

1 Bergson, Time and Free Will, pp. 77 £f., 84, 225 ; Matter and Memory, 
pp. 26, 64, 69, 77, 84-5, 297, 303-4 ; Introduction to Metaphysics, passim; see 
Poincar6's The Value of Science, pp. 112 ff. 



THE PROBLEM OF SCIENTIFIC METHOD 477 

sense-material which is its content, and of no Hkeness at all, so 
far as we can say, to the independent reality which is assumed 
to be causally responsible for that raw-material of human ex- 
perience. It becomes impossible, therefore, to speak of any 
known or any knowable reality, save that which is real only in 
and for human conscious experience, actual or possible, and 
through the constructive activity of human thought ; we have 
not knowledge, but merely a human makeshift for it. But if 
for even so little as this there must be, as something for the 
mental activity to work into shape, the raw materials of sense, 
or, at the very least, temporal and spatial ''intuition" (which, 
from our point of view, is also ultimately empirical), it must be 
evident that the creations of pure reason are twice removed 
from reality and from knowledge of it ; they are not even made 
out of materials produced by the reahty they would be and 
enable us to know. 

The upshot of all this, so far as methodology is concerned, 
is to lead to a sanctioning of induction and, under dejSnite limits, 
deduction, for the gaining of such ''knowledge" as is humanly 
available; but inasmuch as the best we can ever get is not 
knowledge, but something which, as the best thing available, 
goes by that name, obviously in the end all methodological 
considerations are of Httle importance; both induction and 
deduction are, in the last analysis, epistemologically futile. 
We may say, then, that while Kant intended to leave room for 
what we would call a critical empirical monism in methodology, 
and while this was quite in keeping with his critical perceptual 
monism/ it was obscured and handicapped by the absolute 
genetic dualism to which we have referred,^ and by his absolute 
epistemological dualism,^ or his wavering between that position 
and an idealistic epistemological monism. 

The greatest contributions that have been made to the phi- 
losophy of scientific method for many a day, as many would 
agree, are those of Poincare. His fundamental problem, cor- 
responding to the Kantian, How are synthetic judgments a 
priori possible ? has been how to account for the union of novelty 
and absolute certainty in pure mathematics. In 1894 he stated 
this problem as follows : "The very possibility of the science of 

» See Ch. XV, supra. 2 See Ch. XVI, supra. ^ Cf. Ch. II, supra. 



478 THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE 

mathematics seems an insoluble contradiction. If this science 
is deductive only in appearance, where does it get that perfect 
rigor no one dreams of doubting? If, on the contrary, all the 
propositions it enunciates can be deduced from one another by 
the rules of formal logic, how is it that mathematics is not 
reduced to an immense tautology?" ^ Mathematical physics, 
too, with its synthetic judgments a priori, is a fact to be ex- 
plained,^ as is also geometry, in connection with which the prob- 
lem presents itself in a new aspect in view of the development 
of non-Euclidean systems.^ 

In attacking these problems Poincare adopts a fundamen- 
tally empirical attitude, and directs his attention toward the 
nature and function of hypotheses in the various mathematical 
and physical sciences. He finds that there are two main 
classes of hypotheses, viz. generalizations and ''neutral hypoth- 
eses," or conventions. The former are fruitful, because they 
are capable of definite verification or refutation. The latter 
cannot be completely verified, nor can they be refuted ; but, 
being more or less convenient as guides to action, they are to 
be regarded as thought-constructs which are merely useful, 
and concerning which all questions of truth or falsity are irrel- 
evant. He mentions another class, viz. ''natural hypotheses" ; 
but these do not figure largely in his discussions, and it would 
seem that they are simply hypotheses which would come within 
the terms of the definition of conventions, but which it seems 
necessary to interpret not as for that reason neither true nor 
false, but as generalizations not at present capable of complete 
empirical verification.^ 

Among the conventions he would include definitions, although 
of course definitions are not arbitrary conventions, but the 
most convenient constructions available. Mill's contention 
that the definition implies an axiom, a statement about existence, 
Poincar6 would admit only when "existence" is defined in the 

1 "Sur la nature du raisonnement math^matique," Revue de MStaphysique 
et de Morale, 1894, p. 371 ; Science and Hypothesis, Eng. Tr., p. 5. 

* Science and Hypothesis, p. 101. 
» lb., pp. 3, 29, etc. 

* lb., Introduction (by Royce), pp. xxi, xxiv, and also pp. 109-10; cf. 
Vaihinger's distinction between "hypotheses" and useful or indispensable 
"fictions," Die Philosophie des Als Ob, passim. 



THE PROBLEM OF SCIENTIFIC METHOD 479 

purely logical sense of freedom from contradiction.^ But what 
he is especially concerned to urge is that the first principles of 
geometry are mere conventions — not arbitrary, indeed, but 
simply convenient, and neither true nor false.^ Apart from 
such arithmetical processes as may be involved, those axioms 
which have nothing to do with space, but are purely analytical 
propositions,^ the axioms of Euclidean geometry, it is declared, 
are shown by the developments of non-Euclidean systems to be 
not synthetic a 'priori judgments, nor yet experimental facts, 
but simply the most convenient of many logically possible sets 
of conventions, or disguised definitions.^ Our space of three 
dimensions has simply been imposed by ourselves upon nature, 
because of its comparative convenience ; and the same thing is 
asserted of time.^ Essentially the same position is taken with 
reference to mathematical physics. The special principles of 
mechanics reduce in the last analysis to a mere convention, 
which we have the right to make, because we are certain before- 
hand that no experiment can ever contradict it. More explic- 
itly, the principle of the conservation of energy reduces to the 
proposition : There is something which remains constant ; and 
this, although forever unverifiable and irrefutable, we assume 
because of its practical convenience. Even the Copernican 
astronomy is to be preferred to the Ptolemaic, not as any truer, 
but simply as more convenient.^ 

There are very evident suggestions here, it may be remarked, 
of a certain type of pragmatism, or quasi-pragmatism,^ and of 
immediate empiricism, or some form of psychological idealism.^ 
Both the pragmatism and the idealism are avowed in the 
Dernier es Pensees.^ Poincare has been careful to insist that 
science is an end as well as a means, ^^ and that it must give 
genuine knowledge, foresight, as otherwise it would not be even 
useful.^^ But even with these safeguards the idealistic pragma- 

1 Science et Methode, pp. 139, 161-2. 

2 Science and Hypothesis, p. 3, Chs. III-V ; The Value of Science, Chs. Ill, 
IV ; Science et MMhode, Bk. II, Ch. I. 

3 Science and Hypothesis, p. 29. ■* lb., pp. 38-9, 53, 65. 

5 The Value of Science, p. 13 ; cf. Ch. II ; Science and Hypothesis, p. 67. 
« Science and Hypothesis, Chs. VI-VIII, especially pp. 85, 93, 98-100 ; The 
Value of Science, Chs. V-IX, especially p. 76. 

7 See Ch. XVIII, supra. s See Ch, VI, supra. <» Pp. 146-8, 157-8. 

10 The Value of Science, pp. 8, 9. ii lb., p. 115. 



480 THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE 

tism which would reduce not only atoms and molecules but 
space, time, and energy to mere useful devices of human thought 
is hard put to it to give an intelligible meaning to the objectivity 
of science. What is maintained is that the relations which are 
found constantly to obtain in certain groups of sensations are 
the only elements of the experienced that are common to many 
minds, and that they are, as such, therefore, the only objective 
reality.^ 

The other hypotheses, the generalizations, are based upon and 
verified in particular experiences. They all rest upon the in- 
duction which makes us expect the repetition of a phenomenon 
when the circumstances under which it first happened are 
reproduced. "If all these circumstances could be reproduced 
at once, this principle could be applied without fear ; but that 
will never happen ; some of these circumstances will always be 
lacking. Are we absolutely sure they are unimportant? Evi- 
dently not. That may be probable; it cannot be rigorously 
certain. Hence the important role the notion of probability 
plays in the physical sciences." ^ It becomes highly important, 
in order to eliminate uncertainty as completely as possible from 
our generalizations, to choose for purposes of induction signifi- 
cant facts, facts which will serve many times and which thus 
reveal a law. Scientific method, in short, is the judicious choice 
of facts upon which one can safely build generalizations.^ 

But we have, as the result of induction, only probability thus 
far ; there has been nothing to account for the peculiar certainty 
attaching to the novelties which make their appearance in 
mathematics. To explain this Poincare maintains that while 
the procedure of mathematical science in its purity, i.e. in 
arithmetic, is not induction in the ordinary sense of generalizing 
on the basis of sense-experience, neither is it mere deduction. 
It is a true case of the synthetic judgment a priori, and is based 

^ The Value of Science, pp. 135-8. 2 Science and Hypothesis, p. 4. 

3 The Value of Science, pp. 4-9 ; Science et Methode, pp. 7-18, 307-11. C. S. 
Peirce points out that we can draw probable conclusions concerning a set of 
facts of determinate constitution, if we choose fair samples of the collection, 
observe their constitution and generalize carefully ; and that this is so because 
the possible samples which agree with the constitution of the whole are more 
numerous than those which disagree. See exposition by Royce, in Windel- 
band and Ruge's Encyclopedia, pp. 82-8. 



THE PROBLEM OF SCIENTIFIC METHOD 481 

upon an intuition of a special sort, viz. the intuition of pure 
number, which can never lead us astray, however far we may 
carry the generalizations based upon it.^ The dependence upon 
Kant at this point is quite evident ; but Poincare's doctrine is 
far from being identical with the Kantian, with its a ^priori 
intuitions of space and time and its category of number, and we 
must go on to examine more closely what the French philosopher 
has to say about this intuition of pure number and about the 
mathematical induction based upon it. 

The syllogism, according to Poincare, leads to nothing essen- 
tially new ; it adds nothing to the data contained in the prem- 
ises. ^ In order to make any science, even arithmetic, more 
than pure logic is necessary. This something more is what he 
calls intuition.^ Now intuition may be broadly defined as 
immediate presentation of reality (or truth) through an inherent 
power of the mind. When used broadly by Poincare, the term 
is meant to include the data of sense and imagination ; but in the 
narrower sense in which he commonly refers to it as the basis of 
a priori arithmetical knowledge, it seems to refer to an active 
property of the mind itself. It is necessary for the learning of 
mathematics, and in the application of mathematical results. 
It is the instrument of invention in both mathematics and 
physics, and as such necessarily precedes demonstration, fore- 
seeing conclusions and suggesting arguments, sometimes by 
sudden illumination which is due to the influence of subliminal 
processes.* The '4ogisticians," Peano, Russell, and Couturat, 
claim to dispense with intuition in pure mathematics. ''Even 
if we admit," writes Poincare, ''that it has been proved that 
all the theorems could be deduced by purely analytical processes, 
by simple logical combinations of a finite number of axioms, and 
that these axioms are nothing but conventions, the philosopher 
would still retain the right to investigate the origin of these 
conventions, in order to see why they have been judged pref- 
erable to the contrary conventions."^ The "indemonstrable 

^ Science and Hypothesis, Ch. I, especially pp. 7, 13, 14 ; The Value of Science, 
pp. 19, 20, 23. 

2 Science and Hypothesis, p. 5. ^ j<]iq Vahie of Science, p. 19. 

* Science and Hypothesis, p. 14 ; The Value of Science, pp. 21, 23 ; Uenseigne- 
ment mathematique, I, 1899, pp. 157 ff. ; Science et Methode, pp. 56-9, 82, 309. 

' Science et Methode, p. 158. 
2i 



482 THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE 

propositions" with which the logisticians begin, and which they 
would explain as mere conventions, disguised definitions, are, 
according to Poincare, ^'in each case a new act of intuition." 
Nor are these appeals to intuition the last that will be necessary 
in ''pure" mathematics, it is contended. Even Couturat, who 
would construct the new logic without the idea of number, is 
nevertheless obhged to introduce references to number over and 
over again.i Without intuition, logic is sterile, except that it 
may engender contradictions and so make progress by their 
elimination.^ 

But Poincare is far from agreeing with Bergson that we ought 
ever to try to dispense with logic in our pm-suit of knowledge. 
Bare intuition, unless it be the intuition of pure number itself, 
can never give us either precision or certainty. Precision is 
found only in our definitions and in what is logically deduced 
therefrom ; and, in general, the more precise our ideas become, 
the more we are forced to abstract from intuition and the less 
objective our knowledge is found to be. And as for certainty, 
that depends upon proof, and all proof is a logical process.^ 

It is not logic without intuition that can make any science, 
nor intuition without logic, but logic in combination with in- 
tuition. In other words science, even mathematics, is essen- 
tially inductive, rather than deductive. Mathematics is no 
exception to the rule that experiment is the sole source of truth, 
that it alone can teach us anything new, and it alone can give 
us certainty. Pure mathematics need not appeal to material 
objects for verification, but its propositions are arrived at in 
truly inductive fashion, by proceeding from the particular to 
the general; only, the particular in this case is found in the 
intuition of pure number, ''the only intuition which cannot 
deceive us." Mathematical induction also differs from all 
other induction in that it is absolutely rigorous, and its results 
are absolutely certain.^ The axiom of this mathematical 
induction, or of demonstration by recurrence, which gives rise 
to all purely mathematical reasoning, Poincare enunciates as 

1 Science et Methode, pp. 156, 176-7. 2 75.^ pp. 159^ 2II. 

3 The Value of Science, pp. 17, 18, 20, 23, 25, 79 ; Science et Methode, pp. 
130-1. 

* Science and Hypothesis, pp. 2, 3, 101 ; The Value of Science, pp. 20, 23, 25 ; 
Science et MUhode, pp. 160, 162, 309. 



THE PROBLEM OF SCIENTIFIC METHOD 483 

follows: "If a theorem is true for the number one, and if it 
has been proved that it is true for the number n + 1 provided 
it is true for n, it will be true for all the positive whole num- 
bers." 1 

In much of this we can follow Poincare, but at some points 
we must choose another path. Let us indicate some of the 
most fundamental of our objections to his doctrine. In the 
first place it seems impossible to accept his positivistic psycho- 
logical idealism as epistemologically valid.^ To be sure, there is 
some justification for his identifying the Cantorians with the 
realists and the pragmatists with the idealists, because the 
realism which he has in mind consists in the anti-empirical 
attributing of independent reality to universal ideas, as the 
Cantorians tend to do ; while the idealism he is thinking of is 
that which regards these universals as conventions, depend- 
ing upon the mind of man for their being, structure, and 
function, having been devised and chosen with reference to 
practical human purposes, as the pragmatists contend. But 
we can also sympathize with the remark of Hermite, quoted 
by Poincare,^ ''I am an anti-Cantorian just because I am a 
realist." If one believes in an independently real world of 
physical energy in space and time, with which one has immedi- 
ate and mediate cognitive relations, while he cannot adopt 
Poincare's sweeping reduction of the entities of physical science 
to mere convenient products of human thought for practical 
purposes, he will be almost as strongly disinclined to accept 
the Cantorian doctrine that the nature of reality, even so far 
as it is set forth in mathematics, is discoverable without any 
dependence whatever upon experience or intuition. More- 
over there are indications in Poincare's essay in the recent 
volume entitled Le materialisme aduel,^ and in the Dernieres 
Pensees that his own thought latterly was moving in the 
realistic direction.^ 

But the line of distinction, so rigidly drawn, between gener- 
alizations and mere conventions, is calculated to excite sus- 
picions with reference to the fundamentals of Poincare's doc- 

1 Science and Hypothesis, pp. 11-14, 38; The Value of Science, pp. 19, 20, 23. 

2 See Ch. VI, supra. » Dernieres Pensees, p. 160. * Paris, 1913. 
5 See H. C. Brown, Journal of Philosophy, XI, 1914, p. 231. 



484 THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE 

trine. How comes it that there are two radically different 
types of mental instruments, both of which intend to represent 
an independent reality, but of which only one sort actually 
does represent any reality, and that not the present reality 
intended, but a past or future group of sensations, while the 
other, however useful in leading us, actually represents noth- 
ing at all, either in external reahty or in past or future sensa- 
tion? If, however, a realistic theory were adopted, this 
near-dualism of generalization and convention might be appre- 
ciably reduced. Then, it would appear that our more con- 
venient and therefore less arbitrary ''neutral hypotheses," 
as well as our ''generalizations," are framed to represent reality 
as it is, whether immediately experienced by us or not, and 
that these ideas tend to become inconvenient just in propor- 
tion as the facts of experience tend to refute them. Holding 
that reality is broader than the content of human experience, 
we would be entitled to say that even hypotheses which can 
neither be completely verified nor refuted, if the most con- 
venient hypotheses that can be devised, are probably either 
true or reasonably close to the truth. Convenience is a mark 
of rationality, and rationality, according to our realistic and 
empirical doctrine, has taken shape by being moulded upon 
reality. 

There are also difiiculties in the way of accepting, as a whole, 
Poincare's doctrine of intuition. He uses the term "intuition" 
more nearly in the Kantian than in the Bergsonian sense, as 
being not only an immediate awareness of reality, but also in 
some sense a contribution of mind, not through thought, but 
through the activity of some other innate faculty. In all 
three, Kant, Bergson, and Poincare, the term "intuition" refers 
to an at least immediate awareness through some original activ- 
ity of the mind ; but whereas Kant applies it primarily in con- 
nection with space and time, regarding quantity and nimiber 
not as intuitions, but as categories of thought, and whereas 
Bergson regards our awareness of time, as duration, as our 
most completely intuitive consciousness, space being only 
partially, if at all, an intuition, and in some apparently unde- 
termined measure a construct, with quantity and number as 
further derivatives, Poincare, contrary to both, explaining 



THE PROBLEM OF SCIENTIFIC METHOD 485 

space and time as conventions, thought-constructs, is primarily 
interested in affirming the intuitive character of our conscious- 
ness of pure number. Our suggestion would be that in the 
case of both space and time our primary consciousness is intui- 
tive, a direct awareness of reality, much like what Bergson 
asserts with reference to duration. Our consciousness of num- 
ber, however, seems to be partly due to immediate presentation 
of the serial combinations and activities of external reality,^ 
but partly also to a recurrent activity of the mind itself. Ac- 
cording to this view the origin of the number-consciousness 
would be essentially realistic and empirical, as it is in the case 
of space and time; but the apparently more intuitive char- 
acter of the consciousness of number is due to its having a 
more subjective origin than our consciousness of space, what- 
ever Bergson may have to say of our awareness of time. Thus 
we would be able to say that our awareness of number is due to 
an activity of mind, as Kant held ; that, in part at least, it is 
also derivative from our at least partially intuitive conscious- 
ness of spatial and quantitative objects, as Bergson maintains ; 
and yet that it is itself, fundamentally at least, an intuitive 
consciousness, as Poincare has claimed. It is a creative men- 
tal activity by virtue of which a character of reality is directly 
revealed, even if it does come to be a category of thought, the 
particular mode of application of which does depend upon the 
purpose of the moment. From this point of view the sharp 
distinction between the forms of sensuous intuition and the 
categories of thought tends to disappear. Both are regarded 
as due to creative psychical activity, but at the same time as 
being moulded upon the independent reality presented in and 
through that activity. It is convenient, however, to use the 
term intuition in connection with the more original and im- 
mediate states of consciousness, and the term category in con- 
nection with those that are more mediate and derivative. 

This leads us to question whether Poincare is justified in 
setting up so strong a contrast as he does between intuition 

1 E. Picard suggests, very plausibly, that we owe the idea of cardinal number 
(number pertaining to a group) to our sense of sight, and the idea of ordinal 
number to our sense of hearing {Der Wissen der Gegenwart in Mathematik und 
Naturwissenschaft. Wissenschaft und Hypothese, XVI, Leipzig, B. G. Teubner, 
1913). See Journal of Philosophy, XI, 1914, pp. 556-7. 



486 THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE 

and logic. On the one hand, is it true, as he holds in opposi- 
tion to the logisticians, that the syllogism can never teach 
us anything essentially new ? ^ And on the other hand, is it 
true, as he assumes, in agreement at this point with his oppo- 
nents, that deductive logic can dispense altogether with intui- 
tion ? 2 In our opinion the negative answer to both questions 
is quite defensible. We have seen that under certain cir- 
cumstances important new information may be disclosed by 
syllogistic reasoning. This may occur when the right premises 
are brought together, either by accident, as in the case of the 
old priest and his first penitent, or by a sagacious selection of 
the character represented by the middle term.^ And if ordinary 
deduction is not sterile, why should we not look for intuition 
in it as well as in what Poincare calls mathematical induction? 
Is not knowledge of implication, as truly as knowledge of num- 
ber, originally intuitive? Corresponding to Poincare's axiom 
of mathematical induction we have the axiom of the syllogism. 
Instead of the scholastic dictum de omni (that whatever can 
be affirmed of a class may be affirmed of everything included 
in the class) we would suggest the following formulation : 
What is true of any subject is also true of any subject with 
which (either individually or as the class of which this ob- 
ject is a member) it is (so far as all purposes which ought 
to be considered are concerned) numerically identifiable by 
means of some infallible mark.^ That this is an infallible 



1 Science and Hypothesis, p. 5. 2 Science et MUhode, pp. 152-9. 

3 See James, Principles of Psychology, Vol. II, pp. 342-5. 

4 Bertrand Russell has a formulation which is similar, except that it fails to 
bring out so clearly the originally intuitional and empirical character of knowl- 
edge of implication. His statement is, "If anything has a certain property, 
and whatever has this property has a certain other property, then the thing in 
question has the other property" {Our Knowledge of the External World, etc., 
p. 57). For some empirical accounts of deductive reasoning, see J. S. Mill, A 
System of Logic, Bk. II, Ch. II, § 3, where the positive formula is " Things 
which coexist with the same thing coexist with one another," and the negative, 
"A thing which coexists with another thing, with which other a third thing 
does not coexist, is not coexistent with that third thing " ; and James, Psychology, 
Vol. II, p. 340, where " the two great points in reasoning " are thus stated : 
" First, an extracted character is taken as equivalent to the entire datum from 
which it comes; and second, the character thus taken suggests a certain conse- 
quence more obviously than it was suggested by the total datum as it originally 
came." 



THE PROBLEM OF SCIENTIFIC METHOD 487 

mark, and that the numerical identification can be legitimately 
made, depend for their being known upon intuition, and 
ultimately upon experience. Moreover, whereas Poincare has 
classed such axioms as that equals to the same thing are 
equals to one another, as ''analytic judgments a priori/'^ 
we would ask, Are these not generalizations (and as such, 
instruments of thought) on the basis of an intuition, in this 
particular case, of the transitivity of the relation of equal- 
ity ? It would seem, then, that intuition may be held to accom- 
pany even our logical processes, at least in so far as they are 
not mere processes of unintelligent routine. (This is very 
evidently suggested by the strict limits to the new knowledge 
that may be inferred from the premises.) On this view all 
significant deduction is virtually induction. This is not a one- 
sided or absolute empirical monism in methodology, for deduc- 
tion, the syllogism and the a priori have been given their due. 
Rather is it to be called a critical empirical methodological 
monism. 

We must now briefly outline the course of the scientific 
method of proof, as seen from the point of view of our critical 
empirical methodological monism. The sciences are generally 
classified as abstract, descriptive, and normative. It should 
be noted, however, that in the normative sciences we simply 
have certain materials which have been drawn from the de- 
scriptive sciences, selected and organized with reference to the 
realization of some universal ideal, as that of truth in logic, 
beauty in aesthetics, and morality in ethics. They can be suffi- 
ciently dealt with for our present purposes, therefore, in our 
discussion of the method of descriptive science. The method 
of the abstract sciences demands some attention, however. 
It should be noted at the outset that the abstractness of these 
sciences is relative. It is quite evident, for instance, that, 
our consciousness of three-dimension space being interpreted as 
essentially intuitional, not conventional, the Euclidean geome- 
try is abstract with reference to the physical world, and con- 
crete with reference to space. Even pure arithmetic is con- 
crete with reference to number ; but there seem to be important 
grounds for maintaining that mathematical physics is quite 

^ Science and Hypothesis, p. 29. 



488 THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE 

abstract with reference to the actual world.^ In speaking of 
abstract sciences, however, we shall have in mind chiefly the 
mathematical sciences, which are more or less abstract with 
reference to the physical world. Doubt as to the abstractness 
or concreteness of a science may be overcome by raising the 
question whether the science is true of the reahty concerned 
categorically, or only hypothetically. If it is true categorically, 
the science is concrete ; if only hypotheticaUy, it is abstract. 

The definitions with which the abstract sciences begin, while 
not necessarily arbitrary, are nevertheless conventions, which 
are to remain constant throughout the whole process. They 
are not necessarily disguised axioms in the sense of generaliza- 
tions concerning the real experienced world. Poincare is cor- 
rect, as against Mill, in maintaining that the existence assumed 
is nothing more than mathematical existence, i.e. freedom 
from contradiction, from the point of view of the logic of con- 
sistency. In view of the non-EucHdean geometries and the 
science of infinite aggregates, it will be seen that even freedom 
from contradiction-producing characteristics is not a necessary 
assumption in the definitions fundamental to an abstract science. 

The explicit assumptions (axioms and postulates) of an 
abstract science may be anytliing even approximately conceiv- 
able. In some cases the assumptions accord with experience; 
in other cases, while not verifiable, they do not contradict 
experience, and are not arbitrary, but the most convenient 
conventions that can be devised ; in still other cases, however, 
the assumption may be quite arbitrary and not especially con- 
venient, but practically contradicting experience, and even 
running foul of the best efforts of the imagination. It may be 
conceded to Couturat and his feUow-logisticians that the inde- 
monstrable axioms of mathematics and symbolic logic are dis- 
guised definitions ; but this concession has no great significance. 
As axiom or postulate, the ''that," in the mathematical sense 
of permissibihty, i.e. supposed possibihty, or freedom from 
contradiction, is emphasized; as definition, the ''what" re- 
ceives the emphasis. Commonly the most fundamental 

^ See E. Boutroux, Natural Law in Science and Philosophy ; Poincare, Science 
and Hypothesis, pp. 94-8 ; H. Driesch, History and Theory of Vitalism, pp. 223- 
31. 



THE PROBLEM OF SCIENTIFIC METHOD 489 

assumptions of ordinary thought are taken over; but among 
the assumptions sometimes introduced we find the following : 
two parallels to a given straight line, both passing through 
the same point — or, in other words, non-Euclidean space 
(Lobachevski) ; motion without friction ; a stationary earth 
and the heavenly bodies moving in perfect circles (the Ptolemaic 
astronomy) ; an actual infinite, or a whole such that there 
is a one to one correspondence between its elements and 
the elements of one of its parts (Dedekind, Cantor, Royce, 
Russell, Couturat). The point which it is of the greatest im- 
portance to remember here is that the abstractness of the 
abstract sciences is of two possible sorts, viz. the abstractness 
which comes by the subtraction of empirical elements, and the 
abstractness which comes by the imaginary substitution of 
arbitrary for genuinely empirical elements. Euclidean geome- 
try will serve to illustrate the one, and the non-Euclidean 
systems the other. Broadly speaking, the former abstract- 
ness is in the interest of practice, while the latter is productive 
of mere curiosities, which serve only to stimulate speculative 
wonder. 

The procedure in the abstract sciences is largely deductive, 
''analytic" ; but, as we have tried to show, this does not mean 
that it is not at all inductive. It appeals to intuition, though 
it refrains from appealing to all possible sorts of intuition, be- 
cause it has abstracted from experienced reality in its full con- 
creteness, and is interested only in certain phases of the whole. 

The main question for scientific methodology is that which 
has to do with the ^^ novum organum," the method of the 
descriptive, or empirical,^ or overtly inductive sciences. In 
such sciences the preliminary definitions are largely formal, 
with just enough of the content indicated to enable the investi- 
gator to identify the object to be studied. The content of 
the definition constantly grows as the processes of investiga- 
tion are successful. A full definition, one adequate for all 
possible purposes, may be regarded as the goal of empirical 
research. 

1 By "empirical science" we do not mean a scientific description of experi- 
ence as such, but a scientific description of reality as it is known immediately 
in, or mediately through, experience. 



490 THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE 

Among the postulates and other assumptions fundamental 
to any empirical science are properly included, besides the 
assumptions most indispensable to common sense, the axioms 
and postulates of science in general, and the relevant results 
of the other sciences. The existence of the subject-matter to 
be investigated is also presupposed, either as already practi- 
cally certain, on grounds of experience, or else simply as a 
fundamental working hypothesis to be tested by empirical 
methods. 

As the investigation proceeds there accumulates a body of 
empirical data, or what may be regarded thenceforth as pre- 
suppositions. In ordinary perceptual experience there is a 
certain measure of discrimination and choice, only those prod- 
ucts of sense-activity being selected, ordinarily, which have 
some relation to some subjective interest; but in scientific 
observation and experiment this discrimination and choice 
are much more pronounced. In any scientific observation the 
intention is to accumulate simply such data as are relevant and 
may conceivably be made the basis of inductive inference. 
With this hmitation, the collection of data aims to be the choice 
of what Peirce calls ''fair samples"; within the field of the 
relevant the data must be such that we have no reason to sup- 
pose they have not been chosen at random. 

All inductive inference, or generahzation, is based upon one 
fundamental principle, sometimes called the uniformity of 
nature. Less dogmatically put, it is the principle of the de- 
pendableness of nature. Viewed as an hypothesis, it is the 
last to be fully verified, and yet, in the undogmatic form we have 
suggested, it must always be the last to be given up. What 
Mayer is reported to have said with reference to the theory of 
the conservation of energy, ''I discovered the new theory for 
the sufficient reason that I vividly felt the need of it," ^ is 
still more emphatically true of every scientist in relation to 
this fundamental principle. 

We must now take up definitely the question of the method 
or methods of induction, i.e. of discovery of ''laws," which 
may be regarded, for our present purposes, simply as generali- 
zations, stating what the thing under investigation does under 

1 E. Mach, Popular Scientific Lectures, p. 184. 



THE PROBLEM OF SCIENTIFIC METHOD 491 

certain conditions. As might be expected from this definition, 
the main Hnes of procedure are simple enough. ''By indirec- 
tion" we proceed to "find direction out." From the above 
principle of the dependableness of nature, and from the theoret- 
ical constructions to which we shall presently refer, there may 
be deduced certain major hypotheses, from which in turn may 
be deduced minor hypotheses. By minor hypotheses are meant 
such as are capable of being refuted or completely verified in 
single crucial experiments, where acting upon the hypothesis 
leads to an experience in which there is immediate awareness 
either of the reality or of the unreality of what was supposed 
in the hypothesis. (In some cases actual experiment may not 
be necessary, the appeal, perhaps even in the framing of the 
hypothesis, to the known results of past experiences, or to 
''intuition," being sufficient for verification.) Refutation of a 
minor hypothesis involves, it should be noted, refutation of 
the major hypothesis from which it was deduced, and also of 
the logical theory concerned; but verification of the minor 
hypothesis does not mean complete verification of the major 
hypothesis or general theory. To assume the opposite would 
be to commit the fallacy of affirming the consequent. Practi- 
cally complete verification of major hypotheses may be ob- 
tained, however, by the employment of Mill's well-known 
methods of experimental inquiry, the Method of Agreement, 
the Method of Difference, the Joint Method of Agreement and 
Difference, the Method of Residues and the Method of Con- 
comitant Variations. The canons of these methods are stated 
by Mill, as is required by his phenomenological philosophy, in 
terms of "unconditional, invariable antecedent" phenomena 
as causes ; ^ but, translated into reahstic terms, as required 
by our epistemological theory, they would run somewhat as 
follows : An indication of something causally related to a 
phenomenon may be found either in some circumstance in which 
all the instances of the phenomenon agree, or in some circum- 
stance in which alone the two instances of its occurrence differ, 
or in such circumstances as vary whenever the phenomenon 
to be explained varies; and when part of a phenomenon has 
been accounted for, an indication of the cause of the remainder 

1 System of Logic, Bk. Ill, Ch. VIII. 



492 THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE 

may possibly be found in the circumstances which have not 
served to guide to the already discovered causes. These 
indications are sometimes of great service in leading to the 
framing of a successful hypothesis as to the causation of the 
facts under consideration. Once a law has been discovered, 
it makes possible both prediction and the partial control of 
future experience, on the assumption that under the same condi- 
tions the thing will act as before. The further experience result- 
ing furnishes further data for induction. 

But over and above all these laws or generalizations as to 
the nature of observed facts or the course of observed events, 
there is a place for scientific theory, which is essentially further 
a ^posteriori definition of the subject-matter under investigation. 
What it is beyond immediate experience, is capable of being 
learned to some extent in the light of what it is and does within 
immediate experience. Such theory, again, as has been noted, 
suggests further hypotheses which may be empirically tested. 
And obviously, from our realistic point of view, it is not at all 
necessary to regard entities with which theoretical construc- 
tion deals as being mere conventions, so long as no hypotheses 
deduced from the theory are refuted. Moreover, once such 
refutation has occurred, the entity, as conceived, can no longer 
be legitimately assumed, even as a convention. 

All sciences, then, it would appear, are descriptive, either 
categorically or hypothetically. They are hypothetical when 
some condition or conditions need to be expHcitly stated or 
kept in mind, in order to avoid misunderstanding and practi- 
cal error. They are categorical when all conditions are so 
in accord with experience and intuition that they can be taken 
for granted, without explicit statement. But on the other 
hand, not only the original definitions, but the empirical data 
and the generalized descriptions or laws, become assumptions 
forthwith, from which deduction may proceed. And inasmuch 
as all these assumptions may also be viewed as fragmentary or 
real definition, categorical or hypothetical, of a reality, or reali- 
ties, all science is thus, it would seem, broadly speaking, deduc- 
tive. But the assumptions are either directly derived from 
experience or ''intuition," or else they are made on certain 
conditions, the meaning of which is also empirically derived, 



THE PROBLEM OF SCIENTIFIC METHOD 493 

immediately or ultimately ; and so, it would appear, all science 
is also, broadly .speaking, inductive. Even scientific theory is 
description, as well as assumption. It has to do not with an 
absolutely, totally unexperienced reality back of experienced 
processes. It is anticipatory or divinatory further description 
of reahty or processes, some of which may not be, in the more 
direct sense, humanly experienceable — description, more- 
over, on the basis of what is and has been thus directly experi- 
enced. This view of theory as further partial description of a 
not yet fully experienced and perhaps not fully experienceable 
reality, partly on the basis of what is or has been experienced 
of that particular reahty, and partly on the basis of what has 
been experienced of reahties in general, may be likened to the 
completing of given arcs of a circle or ellipse, by means of 
a knowledge of the general nature of circles and elHpses, as 
derived from experience or "intuition." All science, we may 
then say, is deductive, and yet all is inductive, just as we saw 
that all science is descriptive, although obviously it is always 
necessarily to some extent abstract. 

This discovery that the method of all really scientific proof, 
i.e. of all demonstration of the truth about reahty, is one and 
the same, being both inductive and deductive, enables one the 
better to decide between the rival claims of abstract, descrip- 
tive and normative science, respectively, to be the one funda- 
mental form of scientific procedure, to which the other forms 
may be reduced. According to some (e.g. J. S. Mill) all real 
science is descriptive; definitions are disguised axioms, which 
in turn are interpreted as empirical generahzations, tentative 
or final. From this point of view, truth is correspondence. 
According to others (e.g. B. Russell, Couturat) all real science 
is abstract ; axioms are definitions in disguise ; truth is cohe- 
rence (according to Russell, a multiple relation). According 
to still others (e.g. F. C. S. Schiller, and in some points, J. Dewey 
and Wm. James) all science is essentially normative (a system 
of judgments which it is good to believe for practical purposes) ; 
all axioms are postulates ; truth is identical with consequences 
that are good. Now it is true enough, on the one hand, that 
science is always, of necessity, more or less abstract, and on the 
other hand that the various sciences may each be viewed as 



494 THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE 

organized about some fundamental practical interest, so that 
they take on the aspect of organized instrumentalities as related 
to some ideal, or norm. But the fundamental character of 
science, we would claim, is that of being a description of reality. 
Axioms are essentially akin to empirical generalizations, and 
must stand the test of comparison with the facts of experience. 
Abstractness is to be permitted only for the sake of convenience ; 
otherwise it is to be reduced as far as possible in the interests 
of knowledge of reality. Definitions are especially to be 
watched, as possible sources of abstractness, and are to be 
constantly revised and given more concrete content in the light 
of further experience of reality. Normative sciences are to be 
regarded as resulting from a process of selection from the results 
of descriptive sciences for some relatively constant special 
purpose or organized group of purposes; and while all science 
may be said to partake, fundamentally, of this characteristic, 
it must not be supposed that the sciences are mere expressions 
of purpose, requiring no verification beyond practical useful- 
ness in a general way. Every proposition must be brought 
into comparison with reality as experienced. Postulates are 
to be taken as hypotheses and examined with a view to empiri- 
cal justification. 

The above-described, really unitary scientific method, avoid- 
ing, as it does, an absolute dualism of deduction and induction 
and the two one-sided absolute monisms (the deductive, or 
rationalistic, and the inductive, or empirical) may well be called, 
as we anticipated, a critical empirical methodological monism. 
This scientific method is the method of proof, i.e. the method 
of producing logical (sufficiently critical, or intellectually 
adequate) certainty {i.e. intellectual readiness for definitive 
action) with reference to the truth about reality. 

Thus our conclusions in the various separate investigations 
which we have been obliged to undertake are seen to converge 
toward what is, in general, one and the same philosophical 
position. In epistemology proper we were led to a critical 
realistic monism. Obliged, for the completion of our solution 
of the problem of acquaintance, to make excursions into the 
morphology of knowledge and genetic logic, we found ourselves 



THE PROBLEM OF SCIENTIFIC METHOD 495 

with a critical perceptual monism in the former field, and a 
critical empirical monism in the latter. In logical theory, 
again, we arrived at a critical pragmatic monism, and finally, in 
methodology, at a critical empirical monism. Our result is 
thus critical monism, epistemological, morphological, genetic, 
logical, and methodological. This critical monism has this 
much in common with the point of view occupied by Hoeffding, 
and to which he applies the same name, that it ''strives to 
maintain the thought of unity without dogmatizing." It seeks 
to avoid absolute dualism, but does not insist upon arriving 
at an absolute monism. Hoeffding' s interest, however, is 
almost entirely in maintaining his critical monism in connec- 
tion with metaphysical problems, particularly the problems of 
''substance" and of "the one and the many." Moreover, his 
"critical" principle is based upon Kantian presuppositions, and 
is not without its suggestions of agnosticism.^ Our own criti- 
cal monism, on the contrary, which in the present volume has 
been applied only to problems included within the general 
field of epistemology, departs fundamentally from the Kantian 
point of view, and looks directly to the sciences, in which, with 
their carrying of the unifying process as far, but only as far, 
as the facts will allow, the pace is set for all philosophical under- 
takings. One may surmise that this principle of critical mon- 
ism, with its union of the attitudes of faith and scepticism, 
would prove no less fruitful in metaphysics than in the sciences 
and epistemology ; but to anticipate further such results 
would not agree well with the critical ideal of proceeding "with- 
out dogmatizing." 

Finally, to forestall one not improbable even if, as we think, 
superficial objection, our critical monism, we would say, can- 
not be dismissed as "eclecticism." It would hope, to be sure, 
to do justice to those valid elements and approaches to the 
truth which are to be found in most of the systems rejected. 
But while it aims, definitely and persistently, to avoid the 
fundamental errors of other philosophies, it has not been inter- 
ested in any process of culling out whatever attractive and 

1 B.. KoeMing, Philosophy of Religion, Eng. Tr., pp. 33-4, 57, 65-9 ; Problems 
of Philosophy, pp. 135-7, 144; "A Philosophical Confession," Journal of Phi- 
losophy, Vol. II, 1905, pp. 85-92. 



496 THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE 

separately plausible doctrines there may be in the different 
theories considered. On the contrary, it has been primarily 
concerned to maintain both internal consistency and fidelity 
to fact. Indeed, one of the author's principal fears is that in 
his actual procedure he may not have been, in a possible sense 
of the term, eclectic enough. The critical portions of the 
work are designed to show the need of a new system, and for 
that reason they have had to ignore many things for which the 
philosophies examined are undoubtedly worthy of universal 
appreciation. 



INDEX OF AUTHORS 



[Italic figures refer to the more important passages.] 



Albertus Magnus, 79. 

Alexander, H. B., 255. 

Alexander, S., 217, 222, 284-236, 244, 
251, 261, 262-264, 266, 271, 290, 294, 
303-304, 306, 307, 308, 315, 363, 396. 

Aliotta, A., 146. 

Ameseder, R., 204. 

AngeU, J. R., 272, 273, 275, 317, 319. 

Apelt, E. F., 41. 

Aquinas, T., 391. 

Aristotle, 86, 88, 89, 317, 391. 

Aster, E. von, 196. 

Avenarius, R., 63, 111-112, 113, 160, 
219, 220, 230, 251. 

Bacon, F., 463, 472-473. 

Bain, A., 381. 

Bakewell, CM., 206-208. 

Baldwin, J. M., 351, 4II-412. 

Balfour, A. J., 136. 

BardiH, C. G., 38. 

Baumann, J., 64. 

Bawden, H. H., 119-120, 408, 421, 423, 

446. 
Bergson, H., 109, 120-125, 162, 220, 

299, 312, 313, 314, 317, 322, 337, 

339, 340, 343, 347, 357, 360, 361, 362- 

363, 4OO-4O6, 415, 416, 453, 472, 475, 

476, 482, 484-485. 
Berkeley, G., 16, 45, 82, 93, 96, 97-98, 

116, 133, 161, 223, 325. 
Bolyai, W., 464. 
Bolzano, B., 465, 466. 
Boodin, J. E., 227-229, 247-248, 277, 

279, 395-396, 412-413, 423. 
Bosanquet, B., 146, 154-159, 163, 314, 

381-382, 383. 
Boutroux, E., 317, 488. 
Bradley, F. H., 30, 130, 136, 146-153, 

154, 155, 157, 159, 160, 163, 176, 181, 

218, 375-381, 382, 383, 388, 407, 431. 
Brown, H. C, 109, 483. 
Bush, W. T., 220, 224, 267-268. 

Caird, E., 22, 133, 136, 137. 

Caird, J., 96, 134-135. 

CaldweU, W., 431, 437, 446. 

Cantor, G., 303, 465, 466, 468, 483, 489. 

Carr, H. W., 222. 



Cassirer, E., 195-198. 

Clifford, W. K., 55, 100-102, 103. 

Coe, G. A., 75, 77. 

Cohen, H., 83, 193, 194, 195-198, 317, 

339 353 
Cohen, M. R., 206, 264-265, 304. 
Comte, A., 18, 473-474. 
Copernicus, N., 20, 23, 414, 434, 479. 
Cornelius, H., 66-68. 
Costello, H. T., 469. 
Couturat, L., 462, 466, 475, 481, 482, 

488, 489, 493. 

Darwin, C. 356. 

Dedekind, R., 465, 466, 489. 

Delacroix, H., 75. 

De Laguna, T., 431. 

Descartes, R., 93, 246, 352, 462. 

Deussen, 60, 75, 76, 77,. 78. 

De Wette, W. M. L., 41. 

Dewey, J., 92, 114, 117-118, 119, 170, 
219, 221, 224-227, 228, 229, 238, 273, 
274-275, 283, 299, 320, 323, 408, 409, 
420-421, 422, 423, 424, 426, 428, 430, 
436, 446, 493. 

DUthey, W., 25, 33-34. 

Dionysius, 88. 

Drake, D., 53, 54. 

Driesch, H., 299, 317, 344, 488. 

Dunlap, K., 270, 271-272. 

Eckhart, 79. 

Eddy, M. B. G., 50. 

EUiot, H., 360. 

EUisen, 194. 

Eucken, R., 208-209, 317, 433. 

EucHd, 109, 254, 414, 464, 465, 466, 467, 

478, 479, 486, 488, 489. 
Ewald, O., 197, 201. 

Fawcett, E. D., 444. 

Fechner, G. T., 165, 182, 317. 

Fichte, J. G., 25, 57, 85, 96, 104-105, 

106, 141, 162, 195, 231, 317, 338, 339, 

353. 
Fischer, K., 20, 21, 57, 104. 
Fite, W., 430. 
FouHlee, A., 105-106. 
Frege, G., 465. 



2k 



497 



498 



INDEX OF AUTHORS 



Fries, J. F., 37, S8-4I, 42, 347. 
Frischeisen-Kohler, M., 34. 
Fritzsch, P., 183. 

Frost, E. P., 272, 274, 275-276, 291. 
Fullerton, G. S., 114-115, 192-193, 217, 
221, 



Gibson, W. R. Boyce, 208, 209, 317, 

373-374. 
Gomperz, T., 86, 88. 
Green, T. H., 95, 134-136, 155, 317, 

353, 375. 
Guyon, Mme., 77. 

Haldane, R. B., 136. 

HamHton, W., 26-27, 28, 216. 

Harris, W. T., 131. 

Hartmann, E. von, 36, 57, 60-63. 

Hebert, M., 419. 

Hegel, G. W. F., 25, 62, 63, 127, 128, 

130-131, 132, 133, 134, 135, 136, 137, 

138, 140, 155, 157, 162, 175, 176, 181, 

195, 196, 197, 198, 206, 218, 238, 317, 

338-339, 347, 353, 374, 375, 376, 381, 

470, 471. 
Henderson, C. R., 448. 
Herbart, J. F., 36, 4^-44, 45, 46, 48, 

195, 317, 339. 
Hermite, C, 483. 
Herrick, C. L., 455. 
Hobhouse, L. T., 217, 218, 244-246, 

260, 261, 360. 
Hocking, W. E., 121, 123, 161-180, 347, 

403-404, 413-414, 454. 
Hodgson, S. H., 30-31, 114, 115, 219, 

221-222, 223, 224, 228, 259-260, 261. 
Hoeffding, H., 3, 4, 20, 27, 194, 496. 
Hoffman, F. S., 80. 
Holt, E. B., 217, 223, 251-254, 279, 

280-281, 286-287, 291, 296, 300, 303, 

305, 392, 394, 463. 
Hopkins, E. W., 76. 
Howison, G. H., 189-190, 206, 317. 
Hume, D., 19, 20, 23, 27, 63, 98-99, 

100, 133, 182, 183, 213, 316, 363, 354, 

472, 476. 
Husserl, E., 202-203, 206. 

Jacobi, F. H., 37, 38, 42. 

James, W., 10, 52, 99, 114, 116-117, 
122, 219, 221, 222-224, 227, 228, 238, 
251, 266-267, 270, 271, 291, 317, 319, 
340-341, 342, 344, 345, 356-366, 357- 
369, 361, 363, 4O6, 408, 411, 4I8-419, 
420, 4^2-423, 424, 426, 427, 428, 429, 
431, 435, 436, 486, 493. 

Jevons, W. S., 377. 

Joachim, H, H., 383-384. 



Jones, A. H., 51. 
Jones, E. E. C., 398-400. 
Jones, R. M., 79. 
Jordan, D. S., 360. 
Judd, C. H., 221. 

Kant, I., 14, 17-24, 25, 26, 28, 31, 32, 
36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 47, 49, 57, 
58, 59, 60, 61, 69, 78, 83, 84, 85, 96, 
103, 106. 112, 123, 128, 132, 133, 136, 
182, 193, 194, 195, 196, 197, 198, 199, 
206, 230, 231, 299, 317, 331-332, 338, 
339, 346, 348, 361-362, 353, 362, 364, 
365, 370, 372, 402, 462, 464, 472, 476- 
477, 481, 4S4-485, 495. 

KeUogg, V. L., 360. 

Knox, H. v., 413. 

Kroner, R., 203. 

Kuelpe, O., 36, 61, 68-70, 114, 230. 

Ladd, G. T., 8^9, 60-61, 73, 317. 

Lamarck, J. B., 35Q. 

Lange, F. A., 193-196. 

Lanz, H., 203. 

Leibniz, G .W. von, 55, 93, 96, 182, I84- 

185, 317, 362-363, 371-372, 462. 
Le Roy, E., 415, 420, 475, 476. 
Liebmann, O., 193, 196. 
Lipps, T., 106-107, 108. 
Lobachevski, N. J., 464, 489. 
Locke, J., I4-I6, 17, 19, 21, 93, 96, 

213, 247, 317, 322, 353, 371, 372, 373. 
Lotze, R. H., 36, 44-50, 135, 182, 183, 

184, 185, 313, 317, 322, 372. 
Lovejoy, A. O., 66, 240, 246, 310, 311, 

372, 408. 
Luther, M., 195. 

McCosh, J., 216. 

McDougall, W., 260-261, 290, 315, 316, 

317, 319, 360. 
McGilvary, E. B., 217, 227, 238-240, 

277-279, 304, 306, 307, 392-393. 
MacGregor, D. H., 95. 
Mach, E., 110-111, 112, 219, 220, 249, 

414, 416, 490. 
McTaggart, J. M. E., 190-192, 339, 

471-472. 
Mansel, H., 27, 28. 
MarshaU, H. R., 103-104, 361. 
Marvin, W. T., 217, 248-249, 279, 280- 

281, 296-297, 300, 302, 303, 309, 

392, 394. 
Mayer, J. R. von, 490. 
Mead, G. H., 118-119, 220. 
Meinong, A., 203-206, 231, 264, 266. 
Meyer, M., 408. 
Mill, Jas., 354. 



1 



INDEX OF AUTHORS 



499 



Mill, J. S., 27, 63, 100, 116, 182, 223, 

316, 354, 463, 469, 4^4-^75, 478, 486, 

488, 491, 493. 
Miller, D. S., 52, 213, 277. 
Montague, W. P., 217, 223, 227, 248, 

251, 254-258, 259, 264, 279, 287-280, 

295-296, 302, 303, 305, 306, 307-308, 

392, 398-394, 433. 
Moore, A. W., 119, 408, 409, 412, 421, 

423, 431, 434, 446. 
Moore, G. E., 217, 222, 230, 236-238, 

239, 261-262, 266-267, 290, 306, 315, 

319. 
Moore, G. F., 76. 
Morgan, C. Lloyd, 361. 
Muirhead, J. H., 136. 
Miinch, F., 201. 
Miinsterberg, H., 198, 201. 
Murray, D. L., 408, 426, 430. 

Natorp, P., 81, 83, 86, 88, 195-198. 
Nelson, L., 39, 4I-42. 
Nunn, T. P., 217, 240-24^, 244, 251, 
261, 262, 293-294. 

Occam, W. of, 243. 
Oldenberg, H., 76. 
Ostwald, W., 317. 

Papini, G., 420. 

Parmelee, M., 360. 

Parmenides, 77. 

Pater, W., 314. 

Paulhan, F., 317, 410. 

Paulsen, F., 22, 60, 182-183, 193. 

Peano, G., 464, 481. 

Pearson, K., 102-103. 

Peirce, C. S., 4IO-4II, 422, 429, 444, 

480, 490. 
Perry, R. B., 95, 217, 220, 223, 248, 

250-251, 279, 281, 283-285, 286, 291, 

297, 300-302, 303, 306, 308, 392, 393, 

423. 
Petzoldt, J., 112. 
Pfeiffer, F., 79. 
Philo, 86, 88. 
Picard, E., 485. 
Pitkin, W. B., 217, 227, 251, 279, 281, 

281-283, 297, 298-300, 304. 
Plato, 8, 22, 63, 78, 81-89, 133, 197, 

202, 206, 302, 303. 304, 336-337, 339, 

341, 391, 402. 
Plotinus, 86, 87, 88, 89-91, 162. 
Poincare, J. H., 108-109, 303, 414-415, 

416, 463, 464, 466, 468, 470, 476, 477- 

487, 488. 
Porphyrius, 89. 



Porter, N., 50, 216. 
Pratt, J. B., 430, 444. 
Pringle-Pattison, A. S., 26, 51-52, 185. 
Ptolemy, 414, 434, 450, 451, 479, 489. 
Pythagoras, 1. 



Quick, O. C., 425, 444. 



191. 



305, 316. 



Rashdall, H., 187-188, 

Reid, T., 25, 26, 50, 213-21', 

Reinhold, K. L., 37-38, 42. 

Renouvier, C., 188-189, 317. 

Rickert, H., 198, 200-201. 

Riehl, A., 22, 25, 31-33. 

Rignano, E., 360. 

Ritchie, D. G., 88, 136. 

Rogers, A. K., 146, 435. 

Romanes, G. H., 360. 

Royce, J., 131, 136, I4I-I46, 154, 158, 
159, 160, 163, 166, 253, 839-340, 341, 
350, 384-390, 413, 442-443, 449-450, 
465, 475, 478, 481, 489. 

Russell, B., 70-71, 217, 218, 222, 231, 
234, 240, 242-244, 261, 262, 264, 266, 
285, 293, 294-295, 302-303, 304, 305- 
306, 309, 396-398, 403, 419, 444, 463, 
465,' 466, 469, 475, 481, 489, 493. 

Russell, J. E., 423-426, 428, 430, 437. 

Schaub, E. L., 105. 

Schelling, F. W. J., 57-58, 61, 62, 162, 
195 317 338. 

Schiller, F.'c. S., 50, 150, 188, 218, 317, 
383-384, 407, 408, 409, 410, 419-420, 
421, 423, 424, 426, 428, 430, 433, 434, 
435, 446, 455, 463, 468, 493. 

Schinz, A., 416. 

Schleiden, M., 41. 

Schopenhauer, A., 36, 57, 58-60, 62, 63, 
78, 142, 182, 195, 317, 323. 

Schulze, G. E., 24. 

Schuppe, W., 56. 

Sidgwick, A., 420, 427, 468. 

Simmel, G., 432. 

Singer, E. A., 272, 276-277, 291. 

Slosson, E. E., 407. 

Small, A. W., 448. 

Smith, N. K., Ill, 220-221. 

Sneath, E. H., 216. 

Snellman, J. W., 423. 

Socrates, 1, 87. 

Spaulding, E. G., 150, 217, 248, 249- 
250, 279, 281, 282, 297-298, 303. 

Spencer, H., 25, 27-30, 354-355. 

Spinoza, B. de, 63, 93, 182, 462. 

Stebbing, L. S., 457. 

Stewart, J. A., 81, 83, 84, 88, 328. 

Stirling, J. H., 131, 132. 



500 



INDEX OF AUTHORS 



Stout, G. F., 217, 218, 222, 264-266, 

290, 294, 305, 361. 
Strong, C. A., 62-56, 102, 219, 255. 

Tawney, G. A., 431, 435. 

Taylor, A. E., 81, 82, 84, 86, 87, 146, 

154, 159-161, 337. 
Thorndike, E. L., 271, 272, 273-27 4^ 

Ueberweg, F., 79. 

Vaihinger, H., 18, 19, 107-108, 415, 

416, 478. 
Volkelt, J., 63-66, 347. 

WaUace, W., 105, 131. 
Walsh, C. M., 21. 
Ward, J., 185-187, 218. 
Watson, J., 8, 133, 136, 137, 138-141, 
375. 



Watson, J. B., 272, 273, 274-275, 

291. 
Whitehead, A. N., 465. 
Windelband, W., 3, 86, 198-200. 
Wolf, A., 56, 217, 245, 246, 265, 266, 290, 

315. 
Woodbridge, F. J. E., 7, 8, 217, 219, 

224, 233-234, 244, 269-270, 272, 276- 

277, 282, 291. 
Woodworth, R. S., 270-271, 272, 317. 
Woolley, H. Thompson, 422. 
Wright, H. W., 370, 453. 
Wright, W. K., 363. 
Wundt, W., 36, 68, 69, 112-114, 219, 

220, 221, 230, 317. 

Yajnavalkhya, 75. 
ZeUer, E., 86. 



INDEX OF SUBJECTS 



This index is at all detailed only in the case of the author's constructive 
statements. For purposes of reference to the expositions and criticisms of the 
views of others, the Analytical Table of Contents and the Index of Authors 
should be used. 



Absolute, 30, 333. 
Absolutism, 93, 180, 338. 
Abstraction, 85 n. ; see Idealism, ab- 
stract. 
Activism, 312-19, 363 ; see Creative 

activity. 
-(Esthetics, 2, 4. 
Agnosticism, Chs. II-IV. 

fallacy of, 23^ ; cf. 33. 
Anti-conceptualism, 401-6. 
Anti-inteUectualism, Ch. XVIII; 371. 
Apperception, 330, 339, 342. 
Apriori, Ch. XVI. 

absolute, 41 n., 365. 

relative, 41, 330, 364-5. 
Assumptions, 488-9, 490. 
Axioms ; see Assumptions. 

Behaviorism, 272-7, 285-7, 319. 

Categories, 361-4. 

Causality, 316. 

Certainty, 331, 369, 459-61. 

Color-blindness, 321. 

Conception, 341, 350. 

Consciousness, 3-4; Ch. XII; 313, 

314-22. 
Consistency, 

in pragmatism, 435, 451. 

logic of, 369-70 ; see Logic, real and 

formal. 
Cosmolog5% 5. 
Creative activity, 55, 214, 312-14, 315- 

22, 329, 363. 

Deduction, Ch. XX. 

principle of, 486. 
Definitions, 488, 489, 492. 
Dialectic, 127-8, 166-7, 190-2, 339, 

470-2. 
Dogmatism, 

with epistemological dualism, 51, 71. 

of absolute idealism, 127, 135, 137. 

of the new realism, 309, 348. 



Dreams, 322, 342. 

Dualism, epistemological, Chs. II-IV. 
definition, 13, 14. 
involves agnosticism, Chs. II-IV; 
14, 44, 52, 70. 
morphological, 336. 
genetic, 351-2. 
logical, 370. 
methodological, 461-2. 

Eclecticism, 495-6. 
Empiricism, 

activistic, 19 n., 41, 357-65. 
in genetic logic, 353-65. 
in methodology, 372-94. 
immediate; see Idealism, psycho- 
logical, disguised, 
radical ; see Idealism, psychological, 
disguised. 
Empirio criticism ; see Idealism, psy- 
chological, disguised. 
Epistemology, 3, 4-5, 6-7, 333-4. 
relation to metaphysics, 7-10. 
subdivisions of, 10. 
Ethics, 2, 4. 

Experience, 20, 21, 44, 52, 70 ; see Em- 
piricism, 
pure, philosophy of; see Idealism, 
psychological, disguised. 

Freedom, 317-18, 381. 

Geometry, Euclidean and non-Euclid- 
ean, 464-5, 466-7. 

Hallucination, 321. 
History, philosophy of, 4, 5. 
Hypotheses, 490-2. 

Idealism, epistemological, Chs. V-IX; 
13, 14. 
definition of, 72-3. 
subdivisions of, 74-5. 
practica,! and theoretical, 73. 



501 



502 



INDEX OF SUBJECTS 



Idealism, relative, 73-4. 
mystical, 75-80. 
logical, 81-9, 201-6. 

disguised, 85, 230-1. 
mystical-logical, 89-91. 
psychological, 92-120. 
fallacies of, 94-6. 
activistic, 96, 104-6. 
disguised, 96-7, 109-120, 219-30. 
mystical-psychological, 120-5. 
absolute, Chs. VII, VIII ; 128-9. 
faUacies of, 129-30, 133-4, 140-1, 

143-4. 
intellectualistic, 130-41, 154-9. 
voluntaristic, 130, 141-6, 159-61. 
mystical ; see Idealism, mystical- 
logical-psychological, 
logical-psychological, 126-61. 
objective, 128. 

subjective ; see IdeaKsm, psycho- 
logical, 
concrete, 128. 
abstract, 128, 192-208. 
personal, 129, 181-92, 206-8. 

fallacies of, 183-4. 
mystical-logical-psychological, 130, 

161-80. 
theistic, 181-90. 

pluralistic ; see Idealism, personal, 
rehgious, 208-9. 

spiritual ; see Idealism, rehgious. 
Ideas, as constructs, 84. 
Identity (and truth), Ch. XVII; 438- 

42, 445. 
lUusion, 321, 324, 325-6. 
Images, positive after-, 320. 

negative after-, 320. 
IndividuaHsm, 92, 433-5. 
Induction, Ch. XX. 

mathematical, 463, 482-3. 
methods of, 483, 491-2. 
principle of, 490. 
Infinite, 465, 467-8. 
Inheritance, 354, 359, 360, 364. 
Instinct, 360-3. 

InteUectuaHsm, Ch. XVII ; 371. 
Interaction, 50, 93, 320. 
Interpretation, 339-40, 342. 
Introspection, 271-2, 344-6. 
Intuition, 60, 170-1, 346-9, 401-6, 453- 
4, 469-70, 484-7. 

Judgment, 81, 341, 343. 

analytic and synthetic, 332. 

Knowledge, immediate, Chs. II-XVI ; 
327 
mediate! Chs. XVII-XX. 



dependent on immediate, 311-12; 
cf. Chs. II-IV. 
definition of, 311, 
modes of, Ch. XV. 
morphology of, Ch. XV. 
theory of ; see Epistemology. 

Logic, scientific, 2, 370. 

philosophical, 4 ; Chs. XVII-XIX. 

genetic, Ch. XVI. 

real and formal, 369-70, 463, 467, 
468-9. 

symbolic ; see Logistic. 
Logistic, 462-70. 

Meaning, 410-11. 
Memory, 342. 
Metaphysics, 3-4, 5, 6. 

relation to epistemology, 7-10. 
relation to the sciences, 69. 
Methodology, Ch. XX, especially 487- 

94. 
Mind, 94, 313, 316. 
Monadism, 93. 
Monism, critical, 494-6. 

in epistemology proper, 13, 19 n., 

56, 309 ; Ch. XIV ; 334-5. 
in morphology of knowledge, 338- 

50. 
in genetic logic, 355-65. 
in logical theory, Ch. XIX. 
in methodology, 476-94. 
(absolute) epistemological, Chs. V- 
XIII ; 13, 14. 
ideahstic, Chs. V-IX. 
reahstic, Chs. X-XIII. 
(absolute) morphological, 336-50. 
conceptual, 336-7. 
perceptual, 337. 
(absolute) genetic, 352-56. 
rationalistic, 352-3. 
empirical, 353-56. 
(absolute) logical, Chs. XVII, XVIII. 
intellectualistic, Ch. XVII. 
anti-inteUectuahstic, Ch. XVIII. 
(absolute) methodological, 462-76. 
rationahstic, 462-72. 
empirical, 472-76. 
numerical metaphysical (singular- 
ism) ; see IdeaHsm, absolute. 
Mysticism ; see Idealism, mystical ; 
mystical-logical ; mystical- 
psychological ; mystical-log- 
ical-psychological ; also 87, 160. 
and psychology, 92. 
and empiricism, 475-6. 

Ontology, 5. 



INDEX OF SUBJECTS 



503 



Parallelism, 320. 
Perception, 330, 336-50. 

in a complex, 343-4. 
Philosophy, definition of, 1, 

relation to sciences, 1-3. 

its field, 3. 

its problems, 3. 
Postulates ; see Assumptions. 
Pragmatism, 407-58. 

current, 407-37. 

scientific, 408, 414-17, 436-7; see 
Pragmatism, scientific represen- 
tational. 

semi-, 410-14. 

quasi-, 410, 414-17. 

pseudo-, 410, 417-22. 

hyper-, 410, 422-31. 

essential, 417,, 431, 441. 

"absolute," 413. 

negative, 413-14. 

animalistic, 432-3. 

representational, Ch. XIX. 
scientific, 449, 453-5, 456-7. 
Proof, 331, 369 ; Ch. XX. 
Psychology, metaphysical, 5. 

relation to idealism, 92. 

definition of, 318-19. 
Purpose, and relations, 332-3. 

and truth, 380, 390, 440 f., 443, 444- 
5, 446-7, 452, 454. 

Qualities, primary, 15; Ch. XI; 322-8, 

329, 331. 
secondary, 15 ; Ch. XI ; 313 £f., 322- 

8, 329, 331. 
tertiary, 327-8, 329. 

Ratiocination, 341, 343, 486. 
Rationalism, in genetic logic, 352-3. 

in methodology, 462-72. 
Realism, epistemological, Chs. X-XIV ; 
13, 14. 
logical, 83, 85, 86-9, 202-6, 230-1, 

302-6. 
neo-, Chs. X-XIII. 



naive, 212-13. 

natural, 213-17. 

activistic, 316. 
Reflex arc, 320. 

Relations, internality and enternality 
of, 49, 293-302, 332-3. 

primary, secondary, and tertiary, 328. 

knowledge of, 348. 
Relativity, 30. 
Religion, philosophy of, 5. 
Representation, 329-30, 439-41. 

Sciences, relation to philosophy, 1-3, 
69. 

abstract, 2, 487-9, 493-4. 

descriptive, 2, 489-94. 

normative, 2-3, 487, 493-4. 
Sensation, 313-27. 
Solipsism, 103-4, 119-20, 129, 139. 
Soul ; Spirit ; see Mind. 
Subconsciousness, 318-19. 
Subjectivism ; see Idealism, psycho- 
logical. 

Theism, 170. 

Theology, metaphysical, 5. 
Theory, scientific, 492. 
Thing-in-itself, knowable, 67, 327. 
Truth, 81, 145, 331 ; Chs. XVII-XIX ; 
see Logic, real and formal. 

logic of, 369-70. 

definition of, 444-5, 446, 452, 457. 

ideal element in, 446, 448. 

human, 446-7. 

permanence of, 449, 451. 

absolute, 449-50. 

superhuman, 455-6. 

Utilitarianism, in logical theory, 431- 
3, 435. 

Values, 3, 306-8, 328-9, 348, 349. 
Variations, spontaneous, 355 ff., 359. 

Wisdom, philosophy as, 1, 3. 



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